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The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) announced the second iteration of the telecom reforms for the BPM/ ITES industry by issuing the revised Guidelines for the Other Service Providers (OSPs). The revised guidelines are aimed at further liberalizing the OSP reforms that were announced last year. In line with NASSCOM recommendations, several new clarifications and relaxations have been introduced by the Government to further simplify the OSP regime as summarised below:
Overall, combined with the first set of OSP reforms in November 2020, this is a significant ease of doing business reform for the industry. We will continue to engage with Government to push for next set of reforms.
- Remote agent is now allowed to directly connect with the Centralised EPABX of the OSP/ EPABX of the customer: The revised guidelines now enables remote agent of the OSP to directly connect to the customer EPABX or any Centralized EPABX without the need to connect with the OSP Centre thereby avoiding double hop.
- Interconnectivity between OSP and Non OSP’s have now been enabled: The interconnectivity between OSPs with non OSPs for both voice and data has now been permitted. Earlier OSPs were only allowed to have such interconnectivity between same group of companies.
- Centralised internet connectivity have been permitted using SDWAN - The revised guidelines also enable OSPs to have centralized interconnectivity for multiple centers using MPLS/SD-WAN. NASSCOM had sought clarity on the use of SDWAN for such connectivity. This has now been addressed.
- Non -Voice based entities have been kept outside of the OSP purview- The new guidelines have explicitly clarified that non-voice-based entities will not be governed by the OSP regime. This is a welcome move and in line with our recommendation to the Govt. As per the revised guidelines only voice-based entities are now governed by the OSP regime.
- Use of third party EPABX has been enabled: In addition to the own EPABX, the new guidelines allow OSPs to take EPABX services from the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs). Additionally, OSPs have also been allowed to place their EPABX in third party data centers. Such provisions were earlier missing. While this addresses the industry requirement of use of third party EPABX, we had pushed the DoT to allow OSPs to use cloud hosted EPABX solutions as a complete service. However, we believe the DOT clarification is in the right direction and is a significant progress from the status quo on use of cloud EPABX solutions.
- Distinction between domestic and international OSPs have also been removed: The Government has also simplified the categorization of OSPs and have introduced one single OSP category regardless of their domestic/ international business operations. Further, the requirement of submitting any report/ return to DoT or Terms cells have also been done away with.
Overall, combined with the first set of OSP reforms in November 2020, this is a significant ease of doing business reform for the industry. We will continue to engage with Government to push for next set of reforms.
