Understanding Regulatory Compliance For Hosted Contact Centers in India

The market for hosted contact centres in India is growing rapidly due to the business benefits of cloud-based services, customer service needs, and the need for remote work. However, operating a hosted contact centre must meet some regulatory requirements. In this blog, we'll look at the telecom license requirements for a hosted contact centre in India and why having compliance is crucial for a company running a hosted or cloud contact centre.

A cloud contact center is a customer service solution that uses software and infrastructure provided by a third-party service provider. It works in the cloud, so you don't have to worry about maintaining all your equipment and software in-house. Instead, you can manage everything from hardware, software updates, and telecom connectivity to security and maintenance, all from one provider. You can quickly deploy it, integrate it with other tools, and scale it up or down as your business needs change. It's a great way to make customer service delivery more efficient and effective. Plus, it's super flexible and won't break the bank. It's an excellent way for businesses to manage customer interactions across different channels, from voice calls to emails, chat, and social media.

Telecom licenses are the legal permits regulators (Department of Telecommunication - DoT, Government of India) give companies to operate in the telecom industry and offer various communication services. They're not just a bunch of paperwork but also used to do some essential things in the industry. The government gets rightful access to each transaction flowing through the telecom network of the regulated service provider and thus helps in protecting national security. Part of the revenues earned by the regulated service provider is contributed to the national well-being and telecom infrastructure growth.

Telecom licenses usually have strict quality obligations that licensees have to follow. This means that customers get better communication services and reliability.

Regulators set out license rules and regulations to protect consumers' interests. Following these rules ensures that consumers' rights and data privacy are protected.

Operating a hosted contact centre without compliance could run into issues such as a fine or even a shutdown. The rules are there to keep the industry organized and legal. DoT issued compliance guidelines in June 2021 for OSPs (Other Service Providers) who provide voice-based Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services to their customers in India and worldwide. The guidelines can be downloaded from the DoT website link below:

The key compliance requirement arising from this guideline for OSPs using the Hosted Contact Centre service from a service provider is as follows:

1. Registration of OSP centres in India is no longer required. There is no requirement to submit any report/ information to the DoT HQ or its field units routinely. DoT shall carry out no audit/ inspection of the OSP centres.
2. The DoT guidelines work under the self-governance framework, i.e. the duty and ownership to comply with guidelines lies with OSP. While this liberal framework makes it easy to operate, it also brings additional responsibility to OSP to ensure telecom regulatory compliance.
3. OSP can place self-owned equipment, including PBX, IVRs, and telecommunication voice connectivity in 3rd party data centre in India, treated as a POP (Point of Presence) and connect it with its OSP centre. Suppose OSP wants to procure the Hosted contact centre from a service provider. In that case, the service provider will provide various equipment, including PBX, IVRs, and telecommunication resources such as voice, data, and Internet. This POP will be treated as an extension of an OSP Center.
4. Such hosted contact centre services can be provided by a party who is a telecom service provider (TSP). The TSP entity has been granted a valid telecom license under Section-4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, to provide Telecom Service as per the License in a Licensed Service Area (LSA). TSP should have a license issued by DoT, such as UL (Unified License) or UL-VNO (Unified License – Virtual Network Operator). Amongst various types of UL and UL-VNO licenses, the Access services license covers the required delivery variety for Hosted contact centres, such as agents connected to the PBX via PSTN as well as IP-based agents via MPLS, leased circuit and Internet in a required service area. There is another license type, viz., Audiotex, which has nationwide coverage. Still, its scope is restricted to providing only PSTN-based services, i.e. delivering an IP-based agent is not laid out in its license scope.
5. Carrying calls from outside into India or from India to other countries must not result in a toll bypass. Such services can be provided only by the TSPs having a UL or UL-VNO International long-distance (ILD) license.
6. OSP can collect the incoming voice call traffic at one TSP location, and it can be carried and distributed over any wide area networking technology like MPLS, leased circuits interconnecting various OSP centres across India.
7. Complying with toll bypass regulation, OSP, with distributed OSP centres across India, cannot use a centralized gateway to make outgoing PSTN calls. OSP needs to use the PSTN resource located at a respective OSP centre for making outgoing PSTN calls. If you have agents located in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai making outgoing calls, you are required to use local PSTN breakout and a centralized media gateway is not permitted. Many service providers position and convert an outbound call into a click-to-call-based inbound call to the agent. Since inbound calls can use a centralized gateway, the service provider thus avoids using a more expensive, local PSTN breakout model. While this sounds like an 'innovative' technical solution, in spirit, such calls remain an outbound call and need to comply with outbound call regulatory requirements. So ask and understand from your hosted contact centre provider as to how they carry outbound calls!
8. The voice traffic can be carried from TSP-run POP to the OSP centre via any wide area networking technology like MPLS and leased circuits.
9. The Agents working at home or anywhere in India are treated as Remote agents. The remote agents can connect to centralized hosted PBX using any technology, including internet broadband. The Internet-based agent connectivity simplifies the operations, so most contact centres prefer this mode for office-based agents as well. Many service providers take advantage of such situations by securing an undertaking from contact centre companies stating their agents work from anywhere and thus pass the burden of compliance to the trusting contact centres. Beware of such an undertaking!
10. OSPs will maintain Call Data Records (CDR) in Indian standard time, Usage Data Records (UDR), System logs, and identity of user and network devices used for making calls for one year and submit them to the DoT on demand from at least one of the OSP centres.