iSON has built 450 cell towers here. Now it wants a call center business too.
The India-based group has spent about $65 million of a $300-million Philippine plan so far. It told the finance department it is now looking at outsourcing and digital healthcare.
iSON Group, a technology and infrastructure company that Manila Bulletin describes as India-based, wants to add two new lines of business in the Philippines: digital healthcare, and call center and back office work. The Department of Finance said so on Wednesday, after Finance Secretary Frederick Go met the company's executives. The department said new local and export outsourcing operations are expected to start soon.
The company is already here, building cell towers. It promised $300 million over ten years. So far it has spent about $65 million, roughly 22 percent of that, and put up 450 towers. The full plan runs to as many as 4,000 towers, at 300 to 400 a year.
The opportunities are tremendous. We want to put as much money on the ground as possible to really make it happen.
That is iSON founder and director Vivek Gupta, quoted by the finance department. The company is also working with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority on a 40-megawatt solar project in New Clark City, and has floated a $50-million modern farming project and a $200-million farm-and-solar project on top of that.
Why it matters
Towers are the boring part of the internet, and the part most people outside the big cities feel the absence of. Each one is signal where there was none. The outsourcing piece matters for a different reason: most of this year's news about Philippine call centers has been about the work leaving. This is a foreign company saying it wants to open seats here instead.
The catch to watch
Nothing about the new businesses is signed. The finance department described discussions and intentions, not contracts. There is no start date, no site, and no number of jobs attached to the outsourcing or healthcare plans. And the tower money itself is a useful yardstick: about a fifth of it has actually landed, a year into a ten-year promise. Watch the next tower count, not the next announcement.