Licences for the country's first-ever telephone call centres are soon to be issued, holding out the prospect that Bangladesh will soon join the billion dollar global business.

High officials at Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said they hoped to issue the first licences as early as this month, and were asking prospective licensees to contact them in order to finalise licensing policy.

The move to set up call centres in the country has been prompted by the regulator's belief that a ''financial revolution' will be possible in Bangladesh if the country allows the speedy development of the Information Communications and Telecommunications sector.

Bangladesh is lagging behind in the lucrative call centre business, at a time when its neighbour India is earning billions of dollars from call centre business. India has been able to attract multinational companies who are keen to lower costs by outsourcing customer call centres in countries with low labour costs.

Banks, computer companies and telecom groups have taken advantage of the opportunity.

Bangladesh has the advantage of offering even lower labour costs, however the weakness of spoken English in comparison to India is a draw back.

As per the BTRC plan there is restriction on how many call centres would be established. The licence will be given to individuals or companies or joint venture companies, formed under Bangladesh law on nonexclusive basis.

But if any individual or company likely to setting up both domestic and overseas operation, separate licence would be required for international and domestic services, according to draft proposal of BTRC.

The BTRC posted the draft call centre policy in its website (www.btrc.gov.bd) so that prospective operators can share their views in policy making. Anybody can put his or her suggestions until February, 16 through e-mail.

The prospective operators can have multiple call centres under a single licence. But the location with number of agents and client details will have to be registered with BTRC before operation.

A call centre is a physical place where customer and other telephone calls are handled by an organisation, usually with some amount of computer automation.

Typically, a call centre has the ability to handle a considerable volume of calls at the same time, to screen calls and forward them to someone qualified to handle them, and to log calls.

Call centres are used by mail-order catalog organisations, telemarketing companies, computer product help desks, and any large organisation that uses the telephone to sell or service products and services.

In a recent interview with The Daily Star Major General Manzurul Alam (retd), chairman of BTRC, said the second submarine cable is a must for expanding call centres, IP (Internet Protocol) telephony and software business.

"If we had an alternative submarine cable, Bangladesh would be a hub for the ICT outsourcing business," he said, adding that some Indian companies had already visited the BTRC office to inquire about shifting their call center business to Bangladesh.

The India's turnover of the call centres was $ 65 million in 1999-00 which increased to more than $ 10 billion in 2006. IT-enabled services have grown at a rate of 65 percent in India. Foreign companies dominate India's call centre industry, with a 60 percent share of the annual Rs 71bn ($1.5bn) turnover market.

According to draft policy, BTRC will issue two types license--hosted call centre and hosted call centre services. The licence fee ranging between Tk15, 000 and Tk50, 000 based on number of agents the call centre will have.

The call centre or hosted call centre or hosted call centre service provider must not be used as a transit point of any sort.

The draft call centre policy said BTRC will issue call centre licence for 10 years on annual renewable basis.