5th November 2020 will be a historic day for Indian telecom. With the onset of Covid 19, the Department of Telecommunication had to temporarily relax OSP norms so businesses could continue their Customer Service, KPO’s, and Telesales process when more than half of their workforce had to shift to their Homes. Today after 10 months of Working From Home,
The Department of Telecommunications has officially floated some modern, liberal guidelines that come as a massive boost to BPO’s and IT-enabled service sector
This is a historic day for BPO’s & Contact Centers as this charter marks the end of a huge compliance burden for the Business Process Management industry. With the economy in doldrums, the new guidelines will significantly boost IT Services and the Offshoring & Outsourcing industry.
Few Highlights from DOT’s latest OSP Guidelines
Ease of Starting a Business with reduced barriers of entry
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- No registration certificate is required for OSP’s to start their services
- No more hefty Bank Guarantee barrier to set-up an OSP Center( Call center, BPO, KPO etc.)
Interconnection between OSP centers
- Interconnection between two differently owned OSP centers is now permissible over a Virtual private network ( via Leased lines / MPLS) – This is a massive development for Organizations that have outsourced customer service to multiple BPO’s. It will make call data overflow amongst BPO’s easier and at lower costs
- OSP’s can now communicate with their distributed servers/OSP centers using leased lines/MPLS based VPN connectivity using the internet. – Multi site contact centers can now utilize VPN without the need of switching to PSTN networks when communicating with their site-specific servers
Easy Infrastructure sharing between Domestic & International OSP’s
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- EAPBX at foreign locations of International OSP will be allowed. However, all the data and call records pertaining to the OSP should be made available to the Department of telecom.
- Sharing of Infrastructure of Domestic OSP & International OSP’s will be permitted going forward – Earlier OSP’s needed separate Infrastructure requirements for DOmestic and international OSP or one had to pay hefty bank guarantees for infrastructure sharing. Going forward infrastructure sharing between Domestic & international OSP’s will be allowed. But one has to ensure that no Toll bypass takes place.
Permanent Work From Home Ready
- Agents Working from Home will be treated as Remote Agents of the OSP center & interconnection with OSP center is allowed
- Agents can work from anywhere in India
You can also go through the complete guidelines here.
We at Ameyo serve many OSP’s and successfully transitioned more than 50000+ Agents to Work from Home. In our experience, the most challenging aspect of Work From Home contact centers has been establishing remote IT & Ops governance and enabling virtual collaboration and onboarding amongst call center agents and supervisors.
With this regulation, the Work From Home scenario is likely to go upwards, This is a step in the right direction and opens up new opportunities and possibilities for the contact center and BPO domain.
Read More: What was the impact of COVID 19 on BPO Industry?
Impact of COVID 19 on the BPO Industry
Stay tuned for more information on DOT regulations and what it means for companies.
