India – country of the future

You can scarcely pick up a business magazine without some mention of all the call centers and outsourcing in India. Indeed this is old news. However this picture of India does not fit in with a recent meeting I had at work.

IT Manager: we may have some problem supporting Site A

Me: We will have 8 people there and they can call the help center

IT Manager: the help center is not in India, they can’t make international calls

Me: it’s Ok we have an India free phone number

It manager: it probably won’t work on our phone network and even if it does we don’t have enough lines

Me: how many lines do we have

IT Manager: 9

Me: 9 for more than 400 people!!!

IT Manager: well one for the manager and 8 for the rest of people and only 1 of the 8 can dial internationally

Me: can we get more?

IT Manager: no, the exchange is full

Me: can we move to VOIP (voice over IP – you know calls over internet, just like skype)

IT manager: network bandwidth won’t support it

Me: OK, next topic, let’s see if we can get the IT hardware out of customs (it’s been lingering there for a few days now)

I don’t even want to discuss bandwidth in India – we’re having major problems. Seriously does this seem like the type of conversation you would expect in a place where you outsource IT and other services!!!