Bharti Airtel teamed up with US telco giant Verizon to launch a new video conferencing service Airtel BlueJeans for enterprises. The partnership with Verizon made Bharti Airtel the first company in the world to distribute the BlueJeans service of Verizon. However, Bharti Airtel is planning to expand the business operations with Verizon. Gopal Vittal, Chief Executive Officer of Bharti Airtel and South Asia, stated that Airtel has been working with Verizon for many years. The telco will look into various areas which can add value to the company. Airtel, along with Verizon and BlueJeans team, has customized the product to cater to the needs of the enterprises and MSMEs in India.
Airtel will Tap Small and Home Enterprises
Airtel is planning to tap the small and home enterprises which will be bundled with a home broadband connection. Gopal Vittal commented on the competition part and stated that Airtel is not the first company to offer video conferencing services. However, the telco is solving security and privacy problems. He said that all the data would be locally stored in Airtel data centres and cloud. He further added that customers are looking forward to security and ease of use when they opt for collaboration tools. The telco is clear to start with business and enterprises, and people will be willing to pay for the service.
Airtel BlueJeans is Free for 3 Months
Airtel BlueJeans service is free for three months. However, the telco has stated that it will offer competitive pricing options after three months. On the other side, Reliance Jio’s video conferencing app JioMeet is free to use. As reported by ET Telecom, Sanchit Vir Gogia, who is the CEO and founder of Greyhound, stated that partnership between BlueJeans and Airtel is mutually and equally convenient. BlueJeans is bringing the technology, whereas Bharti Airtel is offering its customers and installed base to sell and use local data centres to ensure data residence requirements. Airtel has also stated that it might extend the video conferencing service offering to African nations. Currently, the telco will focus on India and see the response from users.
