Give contact center service providers their due

The time is ripe for the DoT to define clear guidelines for the third-party contact centers in India. Any further delay will impact services in several vital sectors.

By Balbir Bora

In November 2020, the Department of Telecom (DoT) in India decided to drastically simplify the Other Service Provider (OSP) guidelines. Firstly, the registration requirement for OSPs was done away with and the BPO industry engaged in data-related work has been taken out of the ambit of OSP regulations. In addition, requirements such as deposit of bank guarantees, the requirement of static IPs for work from home (WFH), frequent reporting obligations, the publication of network diagrams, penal provisions, etc. have also been removed.

Experts believe that the new framework would provide a strong impetus to India’s IT and ITeS industry and will make India one of the most competitive ITeS jurisdictions in the world.

As of today, there are numerous global and local third-party Contact Center Service Providers that are servicing this growing outsourcing industry. This is a big business in India with multiple kinds of customers being serviced by these omnichannel platforms. Yet, there is no suitable category of DoT license or framework for these service providers. All of these operators are unregulated by the DoT and despite being a big business it is in the grey area unless the department comes out with new rules for the Hosted Contact Center business.

The regulatory outlook

In their recommendation paper on ‘Review of T&C for Other Service Provider (OSPs)’ and subsequent exchanges with DoT in 2019 and 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) addressed the matter of third-party contact centers in India and recommended a regulatory framework for this category of service providers to DoT.

Defining these service providers, TRAI said: “There are service providers who have set up data centers/ facilities for providing the infrastructure required for setting up of a call center/ contact center instantly. The service providers who offer these services directly from their data centers are termed as Contact Center Service Providers (CCSP) and those service providers who have hosted their services over the cloud and are providing these services using the internet are termed as Hosted Contact Center Service Provider (HCCSP).” It is to be noted that this definition of a Hosted Contact Center covers the cloud-based platforms and also cloud telephony services present in this space.

TRAI recommended DoT set-up a registration framework for such service providers.

• CCSP/ HCCSP who provide the Contact Center platform: Such service providers would have to take registration from DoT, similar to what OSPs had in the past.
• CCSP/ HCCSP who provide the platform as well as telecom resources to OSPs: Such service providers are required to obtain the suitable category of VNO license under UL (as applicable) from DoT, on top of the registration.

We believe that these recommendations from TRAI will be taken by DoT as the foundation and building blocks for formulating guidelines on CCSP/ HCCSPs in India.

Impact of DoT’s new OSP guidelines

In the past, the acceptance of Contact Center technologies for use in OSP operations was a matter of contention with the DOT due to the ambiguous nature of the official OSP guidelines.

After the aforementioned exchange with TRAI, the DoT came up with the new OSP guidelines in November 2020 and simplified the entire framework for easy governance in this sector. However, not much changed in the regulation with respect to usage of cloud-based/hosted platforms for OSP operations. The reason is that the topic of Contact Center/ Hosted Contact Center technologies has not been touched upon by DoT in the new guidelines.

Even though the new guidelines are silent on the CCSP/HCCSPs, there is acceptance for architectures with ‘foreign EPABX’ for international OSP operations, which was also a matter of contention earlier among various LSA. It is our understanding that the foreign-EPABX can be owned by the OSP company itself or a third party such as CCSP/HCCPS.

What should a new player keep in mind?

If you want to set up a contact center and/or hosted contact center in India, here is what you should know. The security conditions levied by the government in the new OSP guidelines emphasize the local storage of call data records (CDR), system logs, and system configurations in a tamper-proof format. It should be possible for the OSP company (and by extension, the CCSP/HCCSP) to provide access to this data to DoT, as and when required. It should be possible to facilitate DoT with complete traceability of the voice traffic to ensure that no violations are being committed.

CCSP/HCCSPs hence need to relook their network architecture and business model to ensure compliance with the security guidelines mentioned in the OSP regulations 2020 and also with the Indian data privacy laws (which are under consideration by the government at the moment and can come into effect soon). It should be possible to facilitate DoT with complete traceability of voice calls. Any secure infrastructure for enabling working from home should be hosted in India only. In conclusion, compliance with the security conditions and data privacy conditions should be the foremost consideration for a new player.

What does the future have in store?

In the absence of a valid license for running hosted telephony services, TRAI’s recommendation on CCSP/HCCSPs should be taken into consideration by the regulator to build a strong registration and licensing framework for such technologies. There is a huge amount of business services dependent on CCSP/HCCSPs in the banking, insurance, medical, real estate, and education sector. No clear guidelines from DoT will jeopardise many of these businesses.

In addition to this, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process of developing a new data center policy. This policy will set the framework for structural and regulatory interventions. It is expected to be in-line with the proposed data privacy and security laws of the country which focuses on domestic data storage. A CCSP can keep an eye on this space and make decisions concerning investment and regulatory requirements for the development of a data center facility in India.

Omni-channel technologies have become a sought-after trend in recent times and with the new guidelines, the market for contact center service providers will continue to expand.

Bora is Founder, Whitewater Solutions

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