THE INTERNATIONAL Call Centres in the city are shunting between hope and despair as the much-needed “Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)” facilities available for receiving calls from overseas clients has failed to provide consistent voice quality for over a year now.
There are a total of eight small International Call Centres with each having an average of eight seats operating in two shifts for catering to clients mainly in the United States, Canada and parts of Europe .
The irony is that nearly half of these small International Call Centres in the city close down every six months due to poor voice quality received over VoIP and restart offering voice services to a new set of foreign clients in the aforesaid countries when there are temporary improvements in voice quality received over VoIP,” the manager of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) told HT Live.
He said the packets of data required on a consistent basis to transfer voice from the client to the call centre agent had been getting lost in some “unknown international hubs” resulting in poor quality voice being received at call centres in Lucknow.
“ We had 10 seats at our International Call Centre during April 2004 in Lucknow which declined to 4 during May 2006. Efforts are underway to locate a satellite service provider within the country who could provide seamless VoIP connectivity with high quality voice processing capabilities for operating in full capacity by the end of this year,” Norbell Chief Executive Officer Ashutosh Soti told HT Live.
{{/usCountry}}“ We had 10 seats at our International Call Centre during April 2004 in Lucknow which declined to 4 during May 2006. Efforts are underway to locate a satellite service provider within the country who could provide seamless VoIP connectivity with high quality voice processing capabilities for operating in full capacity by the end of this year,” Norbell Chief Executive Officer Ashutosh Soti told HT Live.
{{/usCountry}}He said an expensive option for ensuring seamless VoIP connectivity for call centers is the “International Protocol Loop Circuit” (IPLC). “However, to say the least, the service is too expensive for small call centres in Lucknow to avail even for a few months”, Soti said.
He said the company’s domestic call centre operations had been doing very well in Lucknow as the internet connectivity does not encounter peculiar problems such as voice data packets getting lost in “ some international hubs” in cyberspace. The “International VoIP” is a different ball game altogether. If you want to ensure quality voice at low costs, its better to start looking for a reliable technology provider either within the country or abroad before starting international call centre operations”, Soti said.