Airtel video conferencing app: Bharti Airtel plans to shortly launch its own branded video conferencing tool for startups and enterprises to tap into the surging demand for such services, taking on the likes of Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams and the recently launched JioMeet.
“Airtel is close to launching several enterprise-grade products including a unified videoconferencing tool very shortly,” a person aware of the telco’s plans said. The initial plan is to launch the product for enterprises — so likely on a paid basis — but the company may look at offering it to regular customers after seeing the demand.
In unified videoconferencing, the service provider offers hardware, connectivity and platform, or a combination of connectivity and platform. The telco serves more than 2,500 large enterprises along with over 500,000 micro, small and medium enterprises in India
As per an ET report, a person close to Airtel’s plan told the daily that the company is planning to launch enterprise-grade products out of which one will be a unified video conferencing tool. “Airtel is focusing on high levels of security as the USP of the product given the growing debate around cybersecurity as people work from home. A lot of customers do ask questions around what’s happening to our data and where am I being served from? One of the key benefits of Airtel will be data localization and security. This will also mean better video and voice quality for the customers,” the source was quoted as saying.
Airtel is likely to use the AES 256 encryption tool for better security and authentication. Video conferencing app like Zoom has been pulled up multiple times for its lag in security. This has also led the company to encrypt calls for all type of users including paid and free users. However, the source revealed that Airtel wouldn’t be on the same lines as the existing video-conferencing app, it would be “differentiated”.
The piece of news comes a day after Reliance Jio came up with its own video conferencing app called the JioMeet to take on the likes of Zoom. JioMeet’s uncanny similarity with Zoom has left the tongues wagging. The app not only has similar functions but even the interface looks strikingly similar to that of Zoom.
A couple of days back, Airtel’s mobile telephony rival Reliance Jio launched its own VC services — JioMeet — which is free to use.
The Sunil Mittal-led telecom operator will be focusing on localisation and security as the key differentiators for its product.
“Airtel is focusing on high levels of security as the USP of the product, given the growing debate around cyber security as people work from home,” the person said, adding that all data would be stored locally.
The tool will work across mobile and desktops and use the latest AES 256 encryption and multiple layers of authentication, the person said.
Airtel didn’t respond to ET’s queries. The government is also pushing local startups and companies to develop local video conferencing apps and services.
