Call centre business in rough territory
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Mehdi Musharraf Bhuiyan
The country's burgeoning call centres businesses are increasingly finding themselves in rough territory - insiders said this week, as the nascent industry is facing backlog due to lack of policy support and an apparent shortage of skilled manpower.
The outsourcing based industry, which heavily depends on telecom connectivity and the high level communication skills of its agents for serving the overseas customers, is facing stiff competition from the more well-known foreign counterparts due to higher cost and the absence of adequate infrastructure.
"High price of internet bandwidth and the frequent interruption in data and voice transfer services are significantly crippling the otherwise highly potential industry", said ABM Reazuddin Mosharraf, Chief Executive Officer of Windmill Infotech Limited, a leading call centre in the capital.
"Currently, we are paying three times more as bandwidth charges than our counterparts in the neighbouring India while the comparative wage of our agents also appears to be higher", Mosharraf, who is also the Secretary General of Bangladesh Association of Call Centre and Outsourcing (BACC) told the FE.
At present, the price of bandwidth, according to the government stipulation is Tk. 18000.00 per mbps. However, the internet service providers usually charge as high as Tk. 25000.00 per month for each mbps after taking into account the additional Value Added Tax (VAT) and profit - call centre owners said.
At a meeting of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on Thursday, the leading call centres have demanded a 60 per cent discount on the price of bandwidth from the internet service providers for all the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) companies.
"The BTRC regulation already allows us a 60 per cent discount on our bandwidth charges from the IIG operators. However, we have demanded for the same from the ISPs as well", Mosharraf said.
At the same time, call centre operators have also urged for uninterrupted data and voice communication services from the internet service companies, citing the frequent interruption in communication services as a major hurdle to serve foreign clients.
"The internet connection of my centre at Purana Paltan went down for a total of 17 times last month, which is totally unacceptable", said Md. Abul Khayer of Times ASL, another top call centre in the country.
More than 30 call centres have sprung up in the capital already while some 50 more are in the pipeline since a BTRC regulation in April 2008 allows the licensing of call centres in the country, paving the way for Bangladesh to have a chunk of the highly lucrative business processing outsourcing market worth US$ 500 billion worldwide.
Last year, the sector earned around Tk. 150 million in revenue from its overseas clients, big names among which includes Microsoft, Bell Canada and Australian company Telstra.
Most of these are centres are run in a small or medium business scale with an initial investment which never crosses Tk. 8.0 million. Major services provided by these call centres include telemarketing, survey over the phone and online customer care services.
Nevertheless, only five or six of these call centres are on the safe ground while others are struggling, industry insiders said, due to the lack of adequate financing from the banks and weak infrastructure including frequent disruption in connectivity and power shortage.
When asked about their position, leading internet service providers however pointed at the government stipulated high bandwidth price of Tk. 18000.00, which remains significantly costly in the Bangladesh context even after gradual reduction from time to time.
"Of course, we would look into the matter of providing uninterrupted services, but when it comes to bandwidth price, surely we cannot offer lower prices after paying Tk. 22000 including VAT for each mbps", said Akhteruzzaman Manju, President of Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh.
Pointing at the lack of adequate technological support, Abul Khayer said, "While India is connected to the world with eight submarine cables, we have only one for our country", adding, "So, how we can expect to bring more foreign conglomerates here".
"Banks are also unwilling to invest in such sectors and government funding is scarce", he added, "because of the lack of tangible assets in this knowledge based service industry".
Industry insiders also pointed that there was a significant dearth of trained manpower in this sector, which requires huge pool of young human resource with excellent proficiency in English to communicate with foreign customers.
"Currently, we are employing mostly students coming from English Medium schools, who are quite naturally, not eager to work with minimum wages", said Mosharraf, adding, "But, in such a way we are significantly loosing our competitive advantage in terms of labour cost".
"So, it is up to the government to build up a good number of training institutes all over the country to prepare human resource from all segment of the society to cater the need of the highly potential industry", Mosharraf added.
The country's burgeoning call centres businesses are increasingly finding themselves in rough territory - insiders said this week, as the nascent industry is facing backlog due to lack of policy support and an apparent shortage of skilled manpower.
The outsourcing based industry, which heavily depends on telecom connectivity and the high level communication skills of its agents for serving the overseas customers, is facing stiff competition from the more well-known foreign counterparts due to higher cost and the absence of adequate infrastructure.
"High price of internet bandwidth and the frequent interruption in data and voice transfer services are significantly crippling the otherwise highly potential industry", said ABM Reazuddin Mosharraf, Chief Executive Officer of Windmill Infotech Limited, a leading call centre in the capital.
"Currently, we are paying three times more as bandwidth charges than our counterparts in the neighbouring India while the comparative wage of our agents also appears to be higher", Mosharraf, who is also the Secretary General of Bangladesh Association of Call Centre and Outsourcing (BACC) told the FE.
At present, the price of bandwidth, according to the government stipulation is Tk. 18000.00 per mbps. However, the internet service providers usually charge as high as Tk. 25000.00 per month for each mbps after taking into account the additional Value Added Tax (VAT) and profit - call centre owners said.
At a meeting of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on Thursday, the leading call centres have demanded a 60 per cent discount on the price of bandwidth from the internet service providers for all the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) companies.
"The BTRC regulation already allows us a 60 per cent discount on our bandwidth charges from the IIG operators. However, we have demanded for the same from the ISPs as well", Mosharraf said.
At the same time, call centre operators have also urged for uninterrupted data and voice communication services from the internet service companies, citing the frequent interruption in communication services as a major hurdle to serve foreign clients.
"The internet connection of my centre at Purana Paltan went down for a total of 17 times last month, which is totally unacceptable", said Md. Abul Khayer of Times ASL, another top call centre in the country.
More than 30 call centres have sprung up in the capital already while some 50 more are in the pipeline since a BTRC regulation in April 2008 allows the licensing of call centres in the country, paving the way for Bangladesh to have a chunk of the highly lucrative business processing outsourcing market worth US$ 500 billion worldwide.
Last year, the sector earned around Tk. 150 million in revenue from its overseas clients, big names among which includes Microsoft, Bell Canada and Australian company Telstra.
Most of these are centres are run in a small or medium business scale with an initial investment which never crosses Tk. 8.0 million. Major services provided by these call centres include telemarketing, survey over the phone and online customer care services.
Nevertheless, only five or six of these call centres are on the safe ground while others are struggling, industry insiders said, due to the lack of adequate financing from the banks and weak infrastructure including frequent disruption in connectivity and power shortage.
When asked about their position, leading internet service providers however pointed at the government stipulated high bandwidth price of Tk. 18000.00, which remains significantly costly in the Bangladesh context even after gradual reduction from time to time.
"Of course, we would look into the matter of providing uninterrupted services, but when it comes to bandwidth price, surely we cannot offer lower prices after paying Tk. 22000 including VAT for each mbps", said Akhteruzzaman Manju, President of Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh.
Pointing at the lack of adequate technological support, Abul Khayer said, "While India is connected to the world with eight submarine cables, we have only one for our country", adding, "So, how we can expect to bring more foreign conglomerates here".
"Banks are also unwilling to invest in such sectors and government funding is scarce", he added, "because of the lack of tangible assets in this knowledge based service industry".
Industry insiders also pointed that there was a significant dearth of trained manpower in this sector, which requires huge pool of young human resource with excellent proficiency in English to communicate with foreign customers.
"Currently, we are employing mostly students coming from English Medium schools, who are quite naturally, not eager to work with minimum wages", said Mosharraf, adding, "But, in such a way we are significantly loosing our competitive advantage in terms of labour cost".
"So, it is up to the government to build up a good number of training institutes all over the country to prepare human resource from all segment of the society to cater the need of the highly potential industry", Mosharraf added.