Thomas K Thomas
Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

New Delhi, April 14 Under pressure from business process outsourcing and call centre units in the country, the Department of Telecom has undertaken an exercise to review its registration policy for companies falling under the Other Service Providers category.

OSPs include telemarketing companies, vehicle tracking service providers and call centres. The existing policy makes it mandatory for all such companies to register with DoT before they can commence operations. However, the industry has asked the Government to do away with this requirement.

"Historically, the Government was concerned with the problem of grey market operators who were terminating illegal long distance calls and thus depriving incumbent carriers of legitimate revenues. With the collapse of the international settlement treaties and the reduction in the access deficit charge on inbound international calling, the grey market has been virtually eliminated," said Mr Sam Chopra, President, BPO Industry Association of India.

4-member panel

DoT has now set up a four-member internal committee to review its existing registration policy.

The committee will look into three main areas including whether to permit partnership firms and individuals to register. Until now only those entities registered under the Companies Act 1956 are allowed to approach DoT. Without registering, these companies cannot seek telecom connectivity from bandwidth service providers.

'Huge ambiguity'

While DoT has sought views from the industry, some of the call centre companies are peeved that the committee is not looking at the issue of whether registration is required or not.

"The mandate given to the committee is related to administrative issues rather than functional ones. We would like DoT to completely do away with the requirement to register OSPs. No guidelines have been issued to service providers specifying who qualifies as an OSP. This itself results in huge ambiguity," said Mr Chopra.

The BPIAI said that the regulations under the Indian Telegraph Act were adequate to ensure that telecom networks in the country are not misused.

15^th April 2008

New Delhi