With a view to improve ease of doing business for IT/ ITES industry, particularly BPOs, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has released revised guidelines for Other Service Providers (OSPs), with simplified compliance requirements, including possibility of work from home and /work from anywhere in India and tighter security conditions. An OSP is defined as an Indian company, registered under the Indian Companies Act, 2013 or an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) registered under LLP Act, 2008 or a partnership firm or an organization registered under Shops and Establishment Act or a Legal Person providing voice based Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. BPO services engaged in data related work are not covered under these guidelines.

The revised guidelines provide for the following :

• No registration certificate / bank guarantee required: The requirement of obtaining registration certificates and complying with several other conditions under the chapters II, III and IV of the extant guidelines, such as deposit of bank guarantees, requirement for static IPs, frequent reporting obligations, publication of a network diagram, penal provisions etc. is done away with.

• EPABX at foreign location in case of international OSP will be allowed: However, the OSP will take all the necessary measures to comply with the requirements of relevant provisions of Indian laws including applicable data privacy laws. In addition, the OSP shall maintain a copy of CDR and System logs in storage at any of its OSP centres in India.

• Provision to work remotely: Work from home (WFH) is encouraged. This is extended to work from anywhere in India (WFA). This facility of Extended Agent/ Remote Agent Position (i.e. Work-From- Home/ Anywhere) is permitted, provided the agents at home are treated as Remote Agents of the OSP Centre and interconnection is permitted. Further, the Remote Agent is also allowed to work from any place within India. Under the extant guidelines, work from home was permitted only as a Remote Agent, subject to payment of a security deposit of Rs.5 crores and an agreement providing for obligations, such as, exclusive use of home agent, all responsibility to be borne by OSP, periodic / surprise inspections of OSPs. OSP shall be responsible for any violation related to toll-bypass.

• Sharing infrastructure between International OSP and Domestic OSP, Use of Distributed Architecture of EPABX and Use of CUG : Sharing of infrastructure by the Domestic OSP and International OSP is now permitted with guidelines for seamless facilitation, on the condition that the OSP ensures that no bypass of the network of the Authorized Telecom Service Providers is caused. The guidelines also cover the use of distributed architecture of EPABX and use of Closed User Group (UCG), for internal communication of the OSP company.

• Interconnectivity between OSP centres belonging to different OSP companies is now permitted. Similarly, interconnectivity among International OSP Centres and interconnection of Remote Agent to the OSP centre/resources is also permitted. Earlier, interconnectivity was only permitted between two or more Domestic OSP Centres of the same Company or group of companies, and, interconnectivity of the International OSP with Domestic OSP was expressly prohibited.

• Security conditions : OSPs are prohibited from engaging in the provision of any Telecom Services; Bypass of licensed International Long Distance Operator (ILDO) and National Long Distance Operator (NLDO) jurisdiction should not take place; The location of EPABX and client’s Data Centre of Domestic OSPs shall be within India; OSPs shall preserve the CDRs for all the voice traffic carried using the EPABX. CDRs / UDRs / System logs, etc. are required to be maintained for a period of one year. For Work-From-Home/ Work-From-Anywhere, the OSP shall ensure that the system logs are tamper-proof and the CDRs/ all logs of the activities carried out by the Extended Agent shall be maintained for one year.

To refer to the new OSP guidelines dated 5 November 2020, click here.