AARNet trials free student videoconferencing

Beverley Head
Thursday, 20 May 2010 13:54

Business IT - Networking

Australia's Academic and Research Network, AARNet, plans to launch a free videoconferencing service for students, researchers and academics in 37 Australian universities and the CSIRO before the end of the year.

The organisation today announced that it had partnered with ViVu, a US based videoconferencing and collaboration start-up, and launched a beta version of AARNet Anywhere.  It has a handful of early trial participants, but is looking for 200-300 beta users of the system to help iron out any kinks.

AARNet has for many years offered its users a national videoconferencing service, but slots on that need to be booked - the intent with AARNet Anywhere is to allow anyone access to ad hoc videoconferencing for free.

ViVu was selected in part because of its relatively light and inexpensive approach to videoconferencing according to AARNet. It has developed VuRoom, which is an application that runs on Skype and allows up to eight people at a time to participate in a videoconference and collaborative work space.

According to the company's ceo Sudha Valluru: 'If you have a browser and a webcam, and can watch YouTube, you are video ready.'

Guido Aben,  AARNet director of e-research, said that the organisations were working together on the project intended to 'democratise videoconferencing' and promote inter and intra university collaboration.

Although the ViVu software can be downloaded for $US9.95 a month, AARNet hasn't had to pay for the software as the two organisations are working together on how to scale the product over massive networks. Valluru, speaking to iTWire from the US, said that 'We are looking at hundreds of thousand of users and want to scale up to millions.'