Allow Ites To Set Up Gateways, Says Nasscom

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) today asked the government to permit IT-enabled services (ITES) companies to set up their own international gateways. In its recommendations to the department of telecommunications (DoT), Nasscom has also said that the licence to open call centre should not be customer specific.

"Today the licencing conditions for call centres and telecom regulations are being compared with countries such as Philippines, Mexico, Ireland. India ranks above these countries in terms of manpower availability.

However, telecom links and licencing requirements for call centres can be a stumbling block for proposed back-office investments in India," Kiran Karnik, president Nasscom said.

Nasscom has also recommended that the DoT should allow sharing of bandwidth between different companies so that infrastructure can be transferred effectively in case of any disasters.

Regarding the removal of customer-specific approvals for call centres, Nasscom has said that, "when a call centre wins a new account, it is required to approach DoT for approval to connect," Nasscom said in a statement.

Nasscom has also pointed out that current regulations does not permit connecting a call centre handling international business to a domestic service provider in addition to an international circuit. "This severely hampers the ability to deliver the needs of the international clients in a cost effective manner," he said.

According to Karnik, "During the past couple of months, there has been increased interest from MNCs to set up call centre operations in India.

It is important that we encourage and sustain this interest and remove all procedural hurdles to ease their entry into India."

Nasscom has also recommended that DoT should permit sharing of bandwidth between different locations of the same company and also within the same group of companies not only for the purpose of backup but also load balancing.

The ITES industry in India has been growing at over 70 per cent and currently employs one lakh people and generates revenues to the tune of Rs.7,100 crore.