Accessing the Indian Railway national enquiry system ?139?runs the risk of getting restricted to just BSNL phones. The call centre run by Bharat BPO, receives around 1.5-2 million calls per day, and is presently accessible through all networks across the country. However, the promoters of the BPO, which is a joint venture between Spanco BPO and Spice group?s Omnia BPO are crying foul over private network providers such as Airtel, Vodafone and others for not sharing their call revenues with it.
Faced with losses, Bharat BPO is even considering to block access to the services from private operators? network. It will cause a major disarray as around 50% of the calls are made through private operators network.
As per the agreement, the company is only being paid by BSNL, through which all calls made through other networks are routed to the call centre. For the contract, Bharat BPO has to shell out Rs 15 crore as licence fee over a 10-year period and it is not getting any fee from railways.
?The company has been making losses due to private service providers not sharing any revenue with them,? said Kapil Puri, chairman, Spanco. Puri said they will approach the department of telecommunications (DoT) to alter the regulation so that Bharat BPO can command a share in the revenue generated through the calls. ?If all talks with the ministry and the service providers fail, we will be forced to block calls from service providers other than BSNL,? he said.
Currently, Bharat BPO?s revenue is around Rs 60-70 lakh per month against an expenditure of Rs 1.5 crore on the service. The company gets paid between 10-15 paise by BSNL for every call made which is charged at Re 1. The call centre, which has 600 seats employees around 1,000 people.
When contacted by FE, Rakesh Tandon, managing director, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) said he was aware of the ongoing tiff between the two parties. ?The 139 service has become hugely popular and we have to continue the service somehow,? he said. Tandon added that railways is considering alternatives and will also broker talks between the service providers and Bharat BPO if required. ?We will also request DoT and the telecom regulatory body, Trai to look into the matter,? he said.
Puri said currently, service providers get to keep around 70% of the revenue generated through the calls to 139 as they pay 30% to BSNL as the carriage fee. Earlier, the promoters of the company, Spanco and Omnia had tried to merge the Bharat BPO with their respective BPO units, which would have created a single BPO unit comprising of Spanco BPO, Omnia BPO and Bharat BPO.
However, as reported by FE earlier, the merger had fallen through due to the differences between the promoters over the management of the new company. ?It is getting difficult to sustain Bharat BPO as a stand-alone entity,? he said. Though the promoters are not looking at selling the BPO to a third party, it could go one way or the other, confirmed Puri.