Tags: Broadband in India, BSNL

BSNL to launch video conferencing services later this month

State owned telecom company BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) has announced that they would be launching their video conferencing services by the end of this month. This would enable the subscribers of their services to not only talk to each other but also see them on a video screen. This facility would be very beneficial to the corporate users of their services who can now hold virtual conferences.

Subscribers of this new service from the company would have to install a video end-point (H.323 standard), which is widely available in the market. Users having access to a computer would be able to use the services by downloading a free software called `PVX’ from BSNL’s Web portal. However, the service is only expected to lure the corporate users, as individual users would find the offer from the company to be very expensive for casual purposes.

The service would require at least an ISDN line, which has a minimum rental of Rs 400 a month. BSNL is also charging a non-refundable one-time registration fee of Rs 200 and a monthly rental of Rs 100. Using the service would cost an additional Rs 10 per minute. BSNL also has plans to offer this facility at its customer service centers across 94 cities.

BSNL would be launching this service in as many as 94 cities including Chennai, Coimbatore, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Shillong, Noida, Ghaziabad, Agra, Jaipur, New Delhi, Gurgaon, and Aurangabad. This would be expanding to a much wider network in the second phase of expansion.