Infosys BPO Trains Focus on Indian Telcos
By Tabrez Khan
Mumbai, Sep 08, 2008 1514 hrs IST

Infosys BPO provides billing management, customer technical support, network performance and monitoring, mobile content provisioning, service activation and analytics services among others to Communication Service Providers (CSPs).

"The recent changes in the Indian telecom market have major implications for Indian CSPs and Infosys BPO is well-placed to offer solutions to tackle these challenges," said Gopal Devanahalli, head of telecom solutions business unit of Infosys BPO.

Increased convergence of data, voice and video, and the emergence of Internet telephony will make voice communications very inexpensive or virtually free, said Devanahalli. Also, changes like introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) and 3G services will have implications for CSPs.

Devanahalli said that the following three factors will be the major deciders:

"MNP may lead to a lot of customer churn, as customers will look for the best set of services on offer. Having a strong analytics capability will help CSPs predict issues with services and stop customer churn.
"Competition may lead to lower rates; therefore the cost of customer service will have to be reduced to manage bottom lines. Things like scenario-based customer service (where a lot of typical customer issue scenarios are pre-stored) can help reduce diagnosing time. This can save time and cost.
"The Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) will soon come into play in India. These are service providers who do not have their own communications infrastructure but buy minutes from CSPs to brand and market them to users.

On the 3G services side, the introduction of these services will lead to generation of more digital content. However, to differentiate themselves from each other, CSPs will have to come up with newer products and customized campaigns for customers.

Assurance will be another key aspect in the future telecom scenario. Assured content and Internet availability will be a key determinant of popularity for 3G service providers. Issues with assurance will need to be tackled by CSPs.

"Compliance issues such as keeping a tab on who is downloading what and finding ways of stopping illegal downloads will also be an important responsibility for CSPs in the 3G era," said Devanahalli.

"Besides interconnect billing will be another key issue. As telecom products get more complex, revenue leakage happens while voice, data and video is transferred from one network operator to another. Interconnect billing systems will have to be robust enough to handle these issues," he said.