Airtel teams up with Verizon, launches video conferencing platform ‘BlueJeans’

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 United States (US)’s  Verizon to introduce a video conferencing solution for businesses in India called Airtel BlueJeans.

The platform also brings down Indian dial-in, per-call cost to ₹0.50. It is also equipped with Airtel Audio Bridge which offers Indian/international local dial-in facility on an unlimited or pay-per-use model. All calls are encrypted with AES-256 GCM encryption in Airtel BlueJeans. It also supports two-step authentication for meetings. Airtel says that BlueJeans user data will be stored in India.

With this, Airtel is all set to take on Zoom, JioMeet, and others for a slice of India’s booming market for conferencing and collaborative tools.

BlueJeans is Verizon’s enterprise-grade video conferencing service which helps people communicate and collaborate across mobile, desktop, browser and conference rooms.

The offering includes a cloud point of presence in India enabling low latency and improved quality of service for India-based customers, a joint statement said.

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.

Airtel BlueJeans can be integrated into other platforms like Microsoft Teams, Workplace by Facebook, Office 365, Google Calendar, Slack, Splunk and Trello. The video conferencing platform also has a waiting room which gives hosts better control over participants.

The “first port of call” for the offering will be enterprises and SMB (small and medium-sized business) customers in India, although the company did not rule out bundling it for home broadband users, at some point.

Gopal Vittal, Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer of Bharti Airtel, 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.

For the first three months, Airtel BlueJeans will be available for free for consumers.