"The market for call centers in Austria is about to boom. The German firm Tetel, for example, is opening centers in Salzburg, Bischofshofen and Vienna, and its CEO Heinz-Dieter Engelen, estimates that such centers will provide approximately 1000 new jobs in Austria over the next two years.

One of the largest phone service operators in Austria is Omnitel in Vienna, whose business-to-business services have brought 25% increase in sales. For its outstanding performance in the field of telemarketing Omnitel recently was awarded with the Austrian Direct Marketing prize. A new entrant is Austria Call, a subsidiary of Germany's Orbitel, specializing in phone answering services, paging and interactive information lines.

Other state-of-the-art services offered by Austrian firms in this emerging sector include electronic data interchange (EDI) and Frame Relay (shared use of high-performance networks).

The call-center boom was set off by the combination of EU-wide telecommunications deregulation and the relaxation of Austrian labor laws: call centers can now offer services around the clock, 365 days a year.

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