Folks,
Broadband would, of course help matters but Travelpack has had a successful
call centre operating in Goa ( Patto Business Centre, Panaji) for four
years via a Linux-based Bosanova IP telephony gateway - see article below.
My Travelpack flight bookings are processed by the Goa office and I am
pleasantly surprised by the clarity of the lines when I have needed to
communicate with them.
Cheers,
Eddie Fernandes
London
PS for Bernardo Colaco's contribution to Goan Voice UK see: 'O Sorriso de
Satya' by Secuntala de Miranda in the Friday 10 Feb, 2006 newsletter at
http://www.goanvoice.org.uk/
Is he edifying a Freedom Fighter ;-)
==
Headline: no more 'jam tomorrow'.
Date: 4 November 2003
Source: Computer Weekly (UK)
Excerpt:
... Sometimes, however, technology can drive a business in the most
rewarding way. Two years ago, Travelpack, a UK-based provider of specialist
holidays to India, moved most of its data entry and accounting functions to
offices in Goa. It set up an IP-based virtual private network to handle data
transfer.
"The downside was rapidly escalating phone bills," explains Travelpack's
joint managing director and IT director Tim Bushell. "Wages may be lower in
India, but telecom costs are not."
On the recommendation of IP Integration - the company that set up the VPN,
Bushell looked into voice over IP, which provides voice calls at local
internet access rates.
Travelpack adopted eight-port, Linux-based Bosanova IP telephony gateways
from BOSCom to provide eight VoIP lines between Harrow and Goa, and internet
links from its three other Indian offices. The cost was less than UKP 5,000.
"As we already had 1mbps leased-line links to our UK and Indian ISPs, our
voice call tariff costs were nil," says Bushell.
Voice quality is good, even at peak times, although there is a fall-back to
the public switched telephone network should quality drop. Travelpack
decided it was good enough for external use too, and took advantage of the
time difference to route early-morning customer calls from the UK to staff
in India.
"Without IP telephony, our monthly telephone bills between the UK and India
would top UKP 100,000 a month," Bushell says. "We built this as a way of
communicating with 15 or 20 internal staff in Goa. There was not a great
deal of pressure for it to work, and it did not involve much expenditure. So
if it did not work, we could have just chalked it up to experience. But it
performed way beyond what we expected.
"We have just bought a new building in India, capable of taking up to 1,000
staff, primarily because we can see the cost savings in taking calls over
there.
"It is almost as if the technology has opened up the business, which is a
bit bizarre."
...
=
- Original Message -
From: "Frederick Noronha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Figi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 8:12 AM
Subject: [Goanet] Re: Broadband infrasturcture
Copying this to officials of GoaTelecom, with a request to offer details
about the services available. Lack of broadband in many parts of Goa is
becoming a serious bottleneck for the speedy growth of
cyber-initiatives/businesses and also for the possible decongestion of Goa
away from its traditionally-crowded towns. FN
From: Figi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 2006/02/10 Fri AM 11:47:28 GMT+05:30
To: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Broadband infrasturcture
Dear Fred
A close businessman is looking at setting up a Call centre in Goa besides
other services in Outsourcing for companies in the UK, US and Europe. He
seems to have difficulty in locating a good broad band service provider
providing VoIP and outher infrasturcture.
I plan to visit Goa with him in March this year and am working up an
schedule to meet up with different people who could help clear the
infrastructure requirments in setting up the project quickly
Plese do fing time from you busy schedue to respond
Regards
Joy Figueiredo
