While online video conferencing solutions such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet swept over the world, replacing legacy VC platforms during the Covid19 induced lockdown, various nations came up with indigenous solutions fearing intrusion and data theft, among other reasons. At the behest of the Government of Bangladesh, their e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-GOV CIRT) too went to research and thus was born, Boithok!
Boithok is now the official video conferencing platform for the Bangladesh Government. On April 23rd, 2021, the State Minister of ICT, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, announced the platform's availability. But there is a catch.
The web-based video conferencing platform that facilitates online meetings free of cost is not accessible to the public yet as it requires further development. Boithok can host only a maximum of 60 participants in a single meet. And if that is not the worst, it can only host between 30 to 35 meetings simultaneously.
Compare it with India's BharatVC, which supports 30,000 active ports and double the passive ports simultaneously. While Boithok can be used only online, BharatVC even supports legacy hardware-based Multiparty Conferencing Devices with no extra cost.
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India (Meity) conducted an online competition for VC solutions, and a mid-sized company from Cherthala in Kerala won the prize. Their video conferencing solution, vconsol was rebranded as BharatVC and was hosted in Amazon Cloud directly managed by National Informatics Centre (NIC). While India took the help of industry experts, Bangladesh relied on in-house talent in their CIRT. And now, even months after the initial announcement, Boithok is yet to see widespread adoption even in government circles.
The developers of Boithok is now working to increase the number of meetings and participants. Leader of the developer team Tanimul Bari said Boithok is not ready for public usage yet and it would take more time to make it capable of serving a large number of people.
"At present, three government offices, including the Prime Minister office, have been using the Boithok platform. We are receiving a good response from them and working on upgrading the application for public use," he said.
"Currently, the platform is being used free of cost. But we will ask the ministry to charge an amount in the future," Tanimul added.
Online video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams have become more reliable media to conduct virtual meetings, classrooms, conferences, and offices since the Covid-19 hit the country last year.
Local businesses and organisations still use the Zoom Cloud Meetings service by paying around $14.99 to $19.99 per month for hosting virtual meetings.
On April 23rd State-Minister of ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak first disclosed the Boithok platform.
He said a team of 10 members of the BGD e-GOV CIRT of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division had developed the platform.
Currently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Financial Institutions Division and the Prime Minister's Office has been using Boithok partly for their virtual meetings.
It can host one-hour long meetings free of cost.
Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the video and audio quality of Boithok are top-notch compared to the other international platforms.
The good thing about Boithok is that users do not need to download any app to use it on computers. They said that a desktop browser is good enough to arrange a meeting and continue the conversation.
However, they still rely on Zoom if there is any meeting with a more significant number of participants, said the officials.
Boithok is compatible with android, iOS and Windows.
Tanimul Bari said that they would improve Boithok's capacity to host more than 300 participants in a meeting in the next few months.
The developers are working on increasing the number of meetings it can host at a time to 100, he added.
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