In its report, the research firm said 293 outsourcing contracts valued at US$50 million or more were awarded worldwide last year, up from 269 in 2004. Despite the increase in the number of such deals, TPI said the total value of commercial outsourcing contracts declined to $75 billion last year, down from $78 billion.

The drop-off was a result of savings from contract restructurings and terminations and the trend toward smaller contracts, Allen said.

Through telecommuting, Outrigger hopes to lower costs by making it easier to add part-time call center workers during busy periods, Peters said. In addition, the company expects that the ability to work at home will help reduce employee turnover rates.

Since November, Outrigger has had four employees working from home on PCs that can be used only for call center work. By next year, Peters wants to be able to offer work-at-home options to all of Outrigger's call center employees, once legacy applications running on back-end systems can be accessed via the Web.

Nationally, there were about 112,000 home-based customer service representatives working for call center services firms last year, IDC analyst Stephen Loynd said in a report released this month. That figure should increase by about 20 percent annually, he predicted.