Colt Tele to up headcount in India by 200

The UK-based telecom services major Colt Telecom Group is planning to move 200 more jobs from Britain to India, in an attempt to leverage the advantage of low cost that India offers.

This would make the total headcount moved to India by the company to 800. The pound 1.2 billion company had earlier outsourced 600 jobs to the country.

The telecom company is also planning to set up a test lab for telecom facilities in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, as it is considering increasing its investments into the country. However, the size of the investments could not be ascertained for the time being.

Confirming this, Tanuja Randery, managing director (strategy and business transformation), Colt Telecom, said, "We will be increasing our headcount in India by another 200 personnel in the next two quarters, as we expect an increase in our businesses from across the world."

Back-end processes, financial services, networking and web-designing are some of the tasks that are currently being outsourced to India by Colt Telecom, and its outsourcing portfolio is slated to remain "more or less the same", according to her.

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The telecom major had set up its Indian operations, primarily a back-office for the UK and the US businesses, in the fag-end of 2004. In the 2004-end to 2005-end period, it had moved 600 jobs to India.

On the backlash that may take place in the UK on the company's move, she said Colt maintains a balance by adding further jobs and more processes in the UK.

Colt Telecom's proposed test lab at Gurgaon, which will also provide employment locally, will conduct tests and studies on equipment.

Although Randery said the company's investments in India would be upped, she did not comment on the actual size of the investments. However, according to industry sources, setting up a test centre with minimal facilities costs around $10 million.Colt Telecom is primarily a fixed-line operator, equipped with a fibre-optic backbone covering over 32 cities. The company is currently on a transformation exercise, to invert its existing voice-to-data ratio of 60:40.