India Inc. a potential global telecom hub

NEW DELHI: Moved by the kind of progress that India has made in terms of opening up its telecom sector, 3COM India country manager — India & SAARC Vijay Yadav opined that India Inc. is now in a position to deliver world class services to global telecom players.

"Now the regulatory framework is so open and the overall infrastructure is all ideally positioning India as a favorable destination for big telecom players in US and Europe to seriously look at India in terms of outsourcing their core services," he added.

Government of India Ministry of IT director, Dr Govind aptly supports Yadav's expression. According to him, a lot of worldwide telecom players are now showing confidence in terms of shifting part of their core services to destinations like India.

"They are confident of the telecom infrastructure that India has built up over these years and now it's a global opportunity for us to be a hub of telecom services. Big Internet companies like Yahoo and MSN are already here at our Internet exchanges, so this has started to happen," he added.

Players like AT&T or Bell have operated in the Indian region for quite sometime, but in a subtle way. A proactive approach towards shifting a part of their core services from existing US or European locations to Indian destinations is likely to increase the already burgeoning BPO industry in the region.

With the telecom watchdog TRAI working hard towards improving the existing quality of telecom services in the region, a time frame of two of five years is likely to see this trend firmly entrenching itself in the BPO fabric of the region.

It's becoming a wireless world. Wireless remote controls for everything from televisions to PCs, wireless telephones of all sorts, and, of course, wireless networks sitting in the middle of it all are gaining popularity.

"Wireless devices are gaining ground all around the world and this can well be another opportunity for Indian companies. As of now, we are not looking at remotely managing wireless networks outside India. But in years to come this could be another opportunity for Indian companies to move up the value chain in terms of getting quality business," Yadav informed.

For some, having a wireless network is a convenience issue--laptop users roam from meeting to meeting, never separated from their all-consuming e-mail. Whatever be the reason, wireless networks are marching boldly into everything from huge corporate offices to SOHO operations. Though not much of wireless services outsourcing have happened so far, but many are looking at it keenly.

"Wireless is happening at a fast rate in the US and European countries and India can play a vital role in all this by getting into the services piece. Wireless networks, unfortunately, are often the most useful in environments such as branch offices and home offices, where there is no IT staff to keep an eye on things. Here having someone keeping an eye on the networks would really help, but it will take sometime for players to develop such models," Yadav added.

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