Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has signed a multi-year licensing, support, and maintenance contract for Convergys' Infinys rating and billing solution with Convergys. BSNL will replace its legacy billing systems with the Convergys’ solution to reduce IT costs and to facilitate the introduction and deployment of new convergent services. BSNL has earlier signed a business process outsourcing deal with Spanco BPO and an IT outsourcing contract with IBM.
The Convergys' solution, which is being delivered in conjunction with TCS, will support BSNL's 18 million wire-line subscribers. It is a real-time charging product that supports IP and IMS network technologies, convergent and online charging, and next-generation business models. Tata will provide project management, business requirement analysis, solution definition, configuration, installation, testing, and data migration, as needed.
"World class telecommunications companies like BSNL realize the importance of their customer relationships as they compete in very competitive and rapidly deregulating markets," said Iain Hackett, Convergys’ Vice President, Asia Pacific Region. "As such, a convergent billing and care platform like Infinys is a requirement to better manage customer relationships, drive greater value from them, and attract and retain new customers."
Telecom is now the hottest industry, which is adopting outsourcing aggresively and the telecom companies are not looking at maintaining in-house IT teams because it’s not their core business. A study released last year by advisory firm, TPI, confirms the fact. It highlighted that the Indian telecommunications sector signed deals worth $1.3 billion out of the total $1.7 billion, in the first half of 2007.
In India, though all telecom majors outsource customer service to small domestic BPOs, but the first time any telecom major tied with global IT giant was in 2004 — when Bharti Airtel signed a decade-long contract, worth $750 million. Today it has expanded to around $2 billion as the phone firm has grown its customers more than 10-fold.
In fact, last year IBM won its fourth major telecom deal from Vodafone, a five-year $600 million deal.
