As per the reports, India’s second-largest wireless carrier, Bharti Airtel Ltd is planning to announce a partnership with U.S. telecommunications giant Verizon Communications Inc. as the company seeks to expand its offerings in the local market.
Bharti Airtel Ltd And Verizon Communications Inc. Partnership
On Tuesday, the New Delhi-based company is scheduled to hold a virtual press conference to share details of their tie-up, as per a link to the invitation to the event.
The said telco is set to launch its video conferencing tool referred to as Airtel BlueJeans in partnership with Verizon-owned BlueJeans which is expected to compete with the recently launched JioMeet and existing popular Zoom Video.
So far, Airtel hasn’t made any official announcement in the same regard, but recently a listing on Airtel’s website revealed the key highlights of the video conferencing tool.
Airtel BuleJeans Facts
Unlike the JioMeet solution, the upcoming video conferencing tool will only cater to enterprise customers which have been launched for both enterprises and end-customers.
Initially, it will be available only for free trials, also customers will have to register with their details on Airtel’s site, and the trial will be activated within 24 hours.
Apart from this, the consumers will also be able to be avail of BlueJeans subscription directly from the company, there is no need to go through Airtel.
However, they may miss out on some features which are bundled by Airtel.
Talking about competition, Airtel BlueJeans will compete with popular video conferencing solutions such as Zoom, Cisco Webex, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
In terms of security, the tool will feature enterprise-grade security features along with real-time meeting analytics and live meeting controls.
For user data hosting, Airtel claims that it is locally hosting user data in the country.
AIrtel BlueJeans is claimed to rely on AES-256 GCM encryption for audio, video, and content transmission.
Apart from that, the Airtel BlueJeans meetings will have a two-step authentication process.
What Does Airtel Say?
A person close to Airtel’s plan had said, “We are close to launching several enterprise-grade products including a unified video conferencing tool very shortly,”.
He also added that the initial plan is to launch a product for enterprises but the telco may look at offering it to regular customers after seeing the uptake.
So far, Airtel has more than 320 million wireless phone subscriptions, compared with about 388 million for Jio. The company is led by billionaire Sunil Mittal.