DoT allows home agents for call centres, telemarketers

Relaxed norms
Companies have to submit a security deposit of Rs 5 crore with the Government.

DoT reserves the right to conduct surprise inspection of agents’ premises.
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New Delhi, Aug. 7 The next time you call a customer care centre or call a toll free number for buying a service or product, you may be speaking to a customer-service agent who is working at home.

In a move that will benefit hundreds of call centres and telemarketing companies in the country, the Department of Telecom has allowed them to appoint Extended Agent Position (work from home) and offer them connectivity to operate from home.

Releasing the revised terms and conditions for Other Service Providers category, DoT said that companies wanting to appoint home agents will have to submit a security deposit of Rs 5 crore with the Government. DoT has reserved the right to conduct surprise inspection at the premises of such agents.

Other Service Providers category includes companies providing services like tele-banking, tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-trading, e-commerce, call centre, network operation centre and other IT-Enabled Services, by using telecom resources.

Interconnect allowed

DoT has also allowed BPOs and call centres belonging to the same company or group to link their network within the country.

For example, a company which owns call centres in Delhi and Chennai can now interconnect the two centres. This will allow these companies to route calls to various centres according to the load. So if the executives at the Delhi centre are busy, then the call can be routed to the Chennai branch resulting in better utilisation of resources.

The Government has also relaxed the terms of sharing infrastructure between domestic and international centres.

While infrastructure sharing was allowed even earlier, DoT has reduced the bank guarantee amount from Rs 5 crore to a maximum of Rs 1 crore.

Sharing has been allowed between domestic Other Service Providers and International centres belonging to the same company.

However, such centres should have at least 50 seats.