UPSC Articles
Department of Telecom eases rules for other service providers
Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III – Infrastructure
In news
- The Department of Telecom eased rules for other service providers (OSP) in the business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology-enabled services (ITes).
Key takeaways
- OSPs are companies or firms which provide secondary or tertiary services such as telemarketing, telebanking or telemedicine for various companies, banks or hospital chains.
- The new rules remove the registration requirement for OSPs.
- Such BPOs that are engaged only in data work have been taken out of the category of OSPs altogether.
- With the government recognising OSP employees as extended or remote agents, companies providing such services will no longer have to carry the additional compliance burden of providing the details of all such employees to the DoT.
- There will be no need for renewal of licenses and therefore foreign companies can be invited to set up or expand their other service providing units in India.
- This important change, which takes data-based OSPs completely out of the ambit of BPOs would mean that such firms can function like any other service firm without the strict and cumbersome guidelines such as presence of agent on location.
