The Hindu Business Line : New licensing norms issued: Sharing of bandwidth for call centres allowed

Under the new guidelines, the DoT has allowed the sharing of bandwidth for disaster recovery and mission critical applications between multiple entities. Call centres are also allowed to share bandwidth between multiple locations of a single entity and also within the same group of companies.

NEW DELHI, May 15

THE Department of Telecommunications (DoT) today issued a fresh set of licensing norms for call centres, aimed at giving a further impetus to this nascent but rapidly growing sector.

Under the new guidelines, the DoT has allowed for sharing of bandwidth for disaster recovery and mission critical applications between multiple entities. Call centres are also allowed to share bandwidth between multiple locations of a single entity and also within the same group of companies.

Internet and International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC) connectivity has further been permitted on the same local area network of the company, meeting long-pending demands of the IT-enabled services (ITES) sector.

According to the new guidelines, interconnectivity of two domestic call centres of the same organisation is permissible subject to approval from the DoT. However, interconnectivity of the international with domestic call centre is not permitted.

Interconnection of call centres of the same group of company for redundancy, back-up and load-balancing has been allowed subject to the prior written approval of the DoT.

Although the DoT has now allowed the domestic call centres to be set up on a separate infrastructure, their request for running on the existing network will be evaluated on a case-to-case basis.

In the case of international call centres, no PSTN connectivity is permitted at the Indian end, but both inbound and outbound calls are permitted.

The new guidelines also allow Internet and IPLC connectivity on the same LAN at the Indian end of the international call centre with the condition that no voice/data traffic shall be permitted from ISP to other destinations via IPLC of the call centre. Internet connectivity is also permitted for

domestic call centres.

The international call centres are permitted to interconnect for the purpose of back-up and working during a disaster, provided they have a dedicated server/router at the `hot site' pertaining to them.

The international call centres of the same group of a company are permitted to cross map the seats for use during a disaster. During normal days, original international call centre will use all the seats, but in case of disaster, cross-mapped seats will be vacated for use of the other international call centre after informing the DoT.

According to National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the ITES industry has been growing over 70 per cent. It employs over one lakh people and generates revenues of over Rs 7,100 crore.

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New licensing norms issued: Sharing of bandwidth for call centres allowed