TelecomLive April-2020

[ News Bytes ] www.telecomlive.com 63 Telecom LIVE April 2020 cast and crew members worldwide such as electri- cians, carpenters, drivers and other hourlyworkers. Netflix says that a majority of the fund will be handed to the hardest- hit people on its own productions. Besides the assistance, they will also get two weeks' pay that the company has prom- ised for workers on pro- ductions that were sus- pended. Also, out of the $100 mn, some $15 mn is sup- posed to go to third par- ties and non-profit orga- nizations that provided emergency relief to out- of-work crew and cast in countries where Netflix has a large production base. Radio operators appeal to centre for relief in view of 'cur- rent economic situa- tion' The Association of Radio Operations for I n d i a ( A R O I ) h a s appealed to the centre for a slew of reforms in view of the current economic situation, which has been further compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. The radio industry has been struggling to deal with a steep de-growth, estimated at 20 pc, in advertising expenditure, that has been fuelled mainly by a steep fall in the government advertis- ing. The measures that need to be put in place to r e s c u e t h e i ndu s t r y include a one-year waiver of license fees and Prasar Bharti charges for radio stations and restoration of government advertis- ing on radio to normal levels and payment of government dues on advertising from DAVP, NFDC andBSNL. In 2019, US denied H- 1B visas to 1 in 5 applicants, Indian IT firms most affected The US has denied one in every fifth new peti- tions for the most-sought afterH-1B visas in 2019 to i nd i v i dua l s wi th the denial rate higher for Indian IT companies like TCS and Infosys in com- parison to the American firms, according to a study from official fig- ures. While the denial rate has dropped slightly to 21 pc in 2019 from 24 pc in 2018, the National Foun- dation for American Pol- icy has said it is much higher for Indian IT com- panies like Tata Consul- tancy Services (TCS) and Wipro and very low for American companies like Amazon andGoogle. F o r i n s t a n c e , t h e denial rate for TCS, and Infosys in 2019 was 31 pc and 35 pc respectively, whereas for Wipro was 47 pc and 37 pc for Tech Mahindra. On the other hand, the denial rate for the new H-1B petitions in 2019 was just 4 pc each for Amazon and Google. Th e d e n i a l r a t e f o r Microsoft during the same period was 6 pc, and Facebook along with Walmart was just 3 pc each. In addition, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data shows the percentage of completed cases with Requests for E v i d e n c e ( R F E s ) increased from 22.3 pc in the year 2015 to 40.2 pc in the year 2019. According to the report, new H-1B petitions for the top seven Indian-based companies declined by 64 pc between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2019. The seven companies had only 5,428H-1B petitions for the initial employment approved in fiscal 2019, accounting for six per cent of the 85,000 H-1B peti- tions for companies (or 0.003 pc of the US labour force), it said. DoT gives nod to allow BPM employees to work from home until April 30 Nasscom got a long awaited nod from the DoT to allow work from home for employees of business pro- cessmanagement (BPM) firms until April 30. DoT said, “The requirement of authorised Service Providers provisioned secures VPN is exempted. Dur- ing this period, the OSPs (other service providers) are permitted to use Secured VPN configured using “Static IP” address by themselves for interconnection between home agent position and OSP Centre with pre-defined locations.” As a precautionary measure to contain the spread of COVID-19 and ensure business continuity, Nasscom had asked the DoT to relax restrictions around work from home for IT/ITeS employees, guided by the OSP regime, for a period of onemonth. B P O & B R O A D C A S T I N G - B Y T E S