As the Indian telecommunications market continues to grow, telecommunications service providers now want to focus on customer satisfaction, customer experience and time-to-market. Analyst firm Gartner believes that outsourcing deals like Idea's with IBM may provide a solution.

Idea Cellular, recently penned a 10-year agreement to outsource some of its operations to IBM at approximately $600 million to $800 million. IBM is responsible for managing and supporting Idea's IT infrastructure and application management, as well as other services including billing and customer management.

Gartner believes that this deal could set a trend among telecommunications service providers in India, as well as the entire Asia/Pacific region.

To meet growing customer expectations regarding quality of service, Indian telcos like Idea are increasingly focusing on their core business while leaving IT management with an outsourcing partner. As subscriber saturation grows among Tier 1 and 2 cities in India, telcos now want to shift their focus on customer retention, rather than expanding subscription base.

India-based companies have often been challenged at managing mission-critical and labour-intensive systems like billing and customer relationship management (CRM). Gartner believes this is why Idea and Bharti opted to outsource their customer-facing systems.

The research firm recommends that India-based telcos could benefit from the global experience of companies like IBM, HP, Accenture, EDS, etc.

Gartner also recommends telcos—planning to move into a technology sourcing environment—to ensure that the service contract includes an exit clause and planning for future mergers and acquisitions.