Boithok needs more time to become accessible to public

Highlights

• On 23 April State-Minister of ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak first disclosed Boithok 
• Currently, only public organisations can use it
• It can host maximum 60 participants in a meeting 
• It cannot host more than 30-35 meetings simultaneously
• The developers now working to increase the number of meetings and participants

The government has developed a web-based video conferencing platform named "Boithok," which offers a facility to arrange online meetings free of cost, but it is not accessible to the public yet as it requires further development.

Developers at the Bangladesh Government's e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-GOV CIRT) have created Boithok.

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 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 a virtual meeting, classroom, conference 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 23 April 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 has 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 a maximum of 60 participants in a single meeting and offers one-hour long meetings free of cost.

Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the video and audio quality of Boithok is top-notch compared to the other international platforms.

The good thing about Boithok is users do not need to download any app to use it on computers. A desktop browser is good enough to arrange a meeting and continue the conversation, they said. 

However, they still rely on Zoom if there is any meeting with a larger number of participants, said the officials.

Boithok is compatible with android, iOS and Windows.

Tanimul Bari said in the next few months they will work to improve Boithok's capacity, so it can host more than 300 participants in a meeting. 

Currently, Boithok cannot host more than 30-35 meetings simultaneously. The developers are working on increasing the number of meetings it can host at a time to 100, he added.