Government eases guidelines for BPOs, norms to facilitate 'Work From Home'

BENGALURU: Prime Minister, Narendra Modi announced on Thursday that the government has drastically simplified the Other Service Providers (OSP) regulations of the Department of Telecommunications and reduced the compliance burden for the BPO industry.

“GoI has significantly simplified Other Service Provider (OSP) guidelines of the Telecom Department.  Compliance burdens of BPO industry will be greatly reduced due to this,” the PM tweeted. Under the new regulations, India’s BPO companies engaged in data-related work have been taken out of the ambit of OSP regulations.

The changes are aimed at facilitating the work from home (WFH) policies of BPO and IT services firms and  also include the removal of additional requirements such as bank guarantees, requirement for static IPs, frequent reporting obligations, and publication of network diagrams.

OSPs are individuals or  firms  that are delivering applications through telephony. The ambiguity around the definition of OSPs and the compliance burden, particularly for India’s IT sector, has been a matter of concern. 

With the onset of the pandemic and adoption of more WFH policies, the DoT had earlier relaxed norms for OSPs. Debjani Ghosh, President of Nasscom welcomed the move, with the association stating that this would scale innovations growth and lead to India becoming a global technology hub.