Liberalised norms for voice-based BPOs to spur growth of sector, says Nasscom

New Delhi: Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday welcomed the government's move to further liberalise guidelines for voice-based BPOs and said this would accelerate the growth of the USD 194 billion IT-BPM sectors, while significantly improving the ease of doing business in the country.

In a bid to cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government has now removed the distinction between domestic and international units and permitted interconnectivity between all types of OSP centers. This will allow global companies, say airlines, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that previously required dedicated, separate infrastructure.

Nasscom, in a tweet, said the revised OSP (Other Service Providers (OSPs) guidelines issued by the government is a welcome step. It added that with these guidelines in place, the IT-BPM industry will be able to attract more investments and enable ease of doing business in the country.

Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said with access to world-class talent and now, the ability to work from anywhere, India will significantly strengthen its lead as a preferred hub for the BPM industry. In a statement, Nasscom said the government has issued clarifications on all the points raised by the industry body earlier, "which are not only beneficial to the industry growth but will also put the Indian IT-BPM sector in a competitive space, in the context of the telecom regulatory regime".

"The new guidelines will enable the industry to fully leverage technology to implement work from anywhere in a seamless manner and provide greater flexibility to utilise their infrastructure and design their service delivery model to better serve the global market," Nasscom said. The reforms will add to India's attractiveness in terms of ease of doing business, it added.

The industry body explained that the new measures in the guidelines will enable remote agents of the OSP to directly connect to the customer EPABX (Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange) or any centralised EPABX without the need to connect with the OSP centre, thereby avoiding double hop. This will also allow interconnectivity between OSPs with non-OSPs for both voice and data, which has been one of the key recommendations given by Nasscom earlier.

Permitting centralised internet connectivity using SDWAN (software-defined networking in a wide area network), keeping all non-voice based entities outside of the OSP purview, enabling the use of third-party EPABX and the removal of the distinction between domestic and international OSPs will provide the industry with greater flexibility and ease of compliance, Nasscom said.

"Combined with the first set of OSP reforms in November 2020, this is significant ease of doing business reform for the industry. Access to hybrid working will give our industry an epic boost and significantly expand access to talent, increase job creation and catapult Indian IT-BPM to the next level of growth and innovation in the country," it added.