The increased convergence of data, voice and video, and the emergence of IP telephony will make voice communications virtually free. And BPO giant Infosys BPO is looking at this as an opportunity to increase their business in the area.

The recent changes in the Indian telecom market have major implications for Indian telecom providers and Infosys BPO is well-placed to offer solutions to tackle these challenges said Gopal Devanahalli, head of telecom solutions business unit of Infosys BPO in an interview to CXOtoday.

The BPO arm of Infosys provides billing management, customer technical support, network performance and monitoring, mobile content provisioning, service activation and analytics services among others to telecom companies.

Devanahalli outlined three emerging trends in the telecom space: 1) MNP may lead to a lot of customer churn, as customers will look for the best set of services on offer. Having a strong analytics capability will help telecom companies predict issues with services and stop customer churn. 2) Increased competition may lead to lower rates; therefore the cost of customer service will have to be reduced to manage bottom lines. 3) The Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) will soon come into play in India. These are service providers who do not have their own communications infrastructure but buy minutes from telecom providers to brand and market them to users.

"Compliance issues such as keeping a tab on who is downloading what and finding ways of stopping illegal downloads will also be an important responsibility for service providers in the 3G era," said Devanahalli.

"Besides interconnect billing will be another key issue. As telecom products get more complex, revenue leakage happens while voice, data and video is transferred from one network operator to another. Interconnect billing systems will have to be robust enough to handle these issues," he said.