[March 28, 2006]

Nortel To Host Bharti Contact Center

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Bharti Tele-Ventures, an Indian provider of telecommunications services, has signed a five-year managed services agreement with Nortel (News - Alert) to host contact center services for more than 19.7 million subscribers to Bharti's Airtel GSM mobile, broadband and fixed-line services.

Nortel will create a Network Operations Center in New Delhi and provide network design, integration, support and maintenance services for Bharti's contact center architecture.

A 24x7 virtual storefront voice portal based on Nortel's interactive voice response product will be the cornerstone of Bharti's new contact center operation. Calling a single number from anywhere in India, Bharti's wireless and wireline customers will be able to speak in English, Hindi, or four other regional languages to complete routine transactions and subscribe to new services.

Nortel has also designed the architecture for future interactive video response capability.

To simplify business, Bharti has designed with Nortel a "per call" approach to paying for Nortel's hosted services, linking its contact center cost structure to network traffic, service levels and customer growth.

Complex customer service requests requiring individual attention will be forwarded to appropriate agents in contact centers operated by four of Bharti's business process outsourcing vendors -- TeleTech Services, Hinduja TMT, IBM (News - Alert) Daksh and MphasiS.

The company's in a highly successful growth stage right now: "Flush with funds and manpower resources that were built up during the rapid growth of telecom business over the past 10 years, over the next 12 months or so, "Bharti will see revenues flowing in from insurance, horticulture and a nation-wide chain of grocery and vegetable stores, the details of which are still being finalized," writes Indian industry observer Sanjay Anand.

Bharti CMD Sunil Mittal told Anand the company is looking at growing to be a $10 billion dollar group within 5-6 years, "with its flagship telecom business contributing under 75 percent of that turnover."

Currently telecom services, under Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd., make up for almost all of about $2.75 billion the group is expected to close "at this fiscal," Anand reports, adding that over the past 10 years, "BTVL has rapidly grown to become a nation-wide, integrated telecom player offering cellular, landline, STD, ISD and Vsat services."

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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