Staff Correspondent

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has finalised a guideline on call-centre licensing, allowing a maximum of 45 percent foreign investment in the services, a top official said Monday.

The telecoms regulator will invite proposals for call-centre licences in the first week of April, BTRC chairman Manzurul Alam told bdnews24.com.

BTRC posted the guideline on its website Monday. BTRC's senior consultant Abdullah A Ferdous said: "We had organised a public hearing on call centre licensing and taken public opinions by email." According to the guideline, licences will be given to individuals, joint venture companies and companies.

For non-resident Bangladeshis, the guideline provides for a maximum of 70 percent ownership for any licence. For a captive international call centre—a call centre set up by an overseas company to serve its own customers alone—the company will be allowed to have full ownership through foreign direct investment.

If any telecoms operator (mobile, PSTN, ISP, DDCSP, IGW, ICX, IIG operator) wants to venture into call-centre business, it will have to separate the call centre location from its existing premises. For foreign investment, no fund can be raised locally from financial institutions in Bangladesh, meaning foreign investors must bring in funds from abroad.

The employment of expatriates will be limited to 10 percent of total workforce after the first year of operation. According to the guideline, there will be no revenue-sharing for the first three years for Dhaka and Chittagong metropolitan areas and for the first five years for the rest of the country.

Licensees will share with BTRC 0.5 percent of its gross revenue earnings on a yearly basis after the end of the revenue sharing break. The guideline says that an operator will have to pay Tk 5,000 for each category of call centre service licence in one-time fees for initial five years.

Major functions of the call centres are customer services of large companies and sales and marketing, including cold calling, email pitches, telephones surveys, lead generation and appointment setting.

Other areas of call centres are intellectual property research and documentation, legal services, medical transcription, payroll maintenance and other transaction processing, product development, publishing, research and analysis.