A proposal before the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that aims to push American call center jobs back onshore has unsettled the Philippine business process outsourcing industry, where 1.8 million workers and $38 billion in annual revenue depend heavily on US clients.
The FCC is taking public comments until June 22 on measures that would make it less attractive for US firms to keep customer service operations overseas, and the proposal lands at a time when the industry is already a pillar of the Philippine economy, employing roughly 1.8 million people and generating about $38 billion a year, most of it tied to American clients.
The measures under discussion include incentives for US companies to base call centers domestically, a requirement that service providers disclose the location of a call center during customer interactions, and rules requiring call center workers to be proficient in American Standard English and properly trained to resolve US customers’ problems. Critics outside the US have described the move as a protectionist non-tariff barrier, and it has stirred concern in both the Philippines and India, the two countries where American outsourcing has helped build millions of jobs, grow export earnings, and develop a skilled workforce over the past two decades.
India’s BPM sector posted an estimated $59 billion in revenue for the financial year ending March 2026, with the US standing as the largest market for BPM exports from both countries. Close to 70% of American companies outsource at least one business function abroad, largely to cut costs and improve efficiency.
The FCC’s case for the proposal goes beyond jobs. The agency argues that offshoring leads to poor customer service due to communication barriers, opens the door to bad actors who exploit the training and infrastructure of legitimate call centers to scam Americans, and raises concerns around privacy, data protection, and national security.
For Mae Caluya, a 46-year-old senior director for operations at a Manila call center, the proposal adds to an already uncertain outlook. “The first to go are people like us in management,” Caluya told The Straits Times, noting that firms tend to retrench higher-paid executive and senior staff first when cutting costs. She was retrenched from a call center in 2024 after her management post was deemed redundant, and is now weighing a move into consultancy or academia if conditions worsen.
Caluya said she’s more worried about the rank-and-file than about people in her own position. “The regular agents are the ones I worry about,” she said. “Most Filipinos don’t have deep savings.” Her advice to workers for now: “Save and embrace the job while they can.”
This isn’t the first US move to rattle the Philippine BPO sector. A bipartisan Senate bill, the Keep Call Centers in America Act, has been moving through Congress since 2025 with similar aims of penalizing companies that offshore customer service jobs. Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez has said he’s lobbying members of Congress to exempt the Philippines from that bill, while IBPAP, the industry’s main trade group, has said it is tracking the legislation closely without yet seeing a clear path to a vote. The FCC proposal is a separate process, run through the regulator’s own rulemaking process rather than Congress, but it points in the same direction: making offshore customer service less attractive to US companies.
No timeline has been set for when the FCC might act on the proposal once the comment period closes. Industry leaders in both the Philippines and India say they are watching closely for any concrete fallout once the public comment period ends.
