With BlueJeans, Airtel wants to offer Indians secure video conferencing experience
With everyone moving digital and connecting virtually with one another video conferencing platforms have become a part of life. Given how important video calling services have become Airtel has launched a new video conference platform in the country today. The telecom operator announced a strategic alliance with Verizon to introduce a video conferencing solution for businesses in India called Airtel BlueJeans.
Compared to competitors such as JioMeet, Zoom, Skype, and others, BlueJeans is different as it aims to serve only businesses — from large to small. It will be available for consumers in the country starting tonight.
Gopal Vittal, Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer of Bharti Airtel believes that Airtel BlueJeans is one of the most secure of them all the video conference platforms available in the Indian market. “We are not the first ones in the market to bring such a solution — there are many — but our platform is one of the most secure ones,” Vittal said during a press briefing.
BlueJeans, founded by Krish Ramakrishnan and Alagu Periyannan, both born and educated in India, was acquired by Verizon in May 2020. Interestingly, the first prototype of BlueJeans was tested in Pune in 2009 and in 2012 at the company’s R&D and development centre in India.
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With BlueJeans, both Airtel and Verizon want to offer users in India a safe and secure video conferencing experience. Vittal and Hans Vestberg, Chief Executive Officer of Verizon said during a virtual press conference on BlueJeans that data of Indian users will be hosted in the country and stored in data centers in India. “Security is our primary plan and that’s how BlueJeans differentiates itself from the other competitors in the market,” said Vestberg.
BlueJeans’ enterprise-level security features such as meeting lock, secure transmission and storage, randomized meeting IDs, participant passcodes, fraud detection, and a variety of authentication options. It uses open, proven standards for security as well as the WebRTC and HTML5 standards for browser-based access, enabling users to participate in meetings and events without requiring software downloads, a key requirement in some secure environments.
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For the first three months, Airtel BlueJeans will be available for free for consumers. Vittal said, in the days to come the company will announce packages for enterprises. “We will have three kinds of packages for our consumers — one for large enterprise, the second one for medium and the third for tiny or small business. We will reveal packages for BlueJeans over the next few days,” Vittal said. He also assured that prices for BlueJeans will be extremely competitive in India.
BlueJeans will be fully integrated with Airtel’s network, including its data centers, to ensure that customers are offered a reliable and secure video experience. It will offer an integrated audio solution, giving its customers convenient dial-in options to join the meetings.