Demand for over 150k in roles in 5G, cloud computing, AI & big data: Report

TSSC's 'Indian Telecom Market 2022-23' report outlines growth and acceleration for skilling of NXTGEN technologies workforce

The Telecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC), the Council responsible for skilling in telecom, on Wednesday launched a report ‘Overview: Indian Telecom Market 2022-23’, charting out the areas of traction where the telecom industry would witness growth in the coming financial year.

The report highlights that in the past year, there was a combined demand for over 150,000 in roles in 5G, Cloud Computing, AI & Big Data Analytics, IoT, Mobile App-Development and Robotic Process Automation - the demand supply gap is almost 28%. The talent demand supply gap will continue to widen with the advent of 5G and allied technologies rollout.

Also, in view of India’s 5G rollout in the near future, TSSC has firmed up its plans to boost skill infra and workforce along with its partners and stakeholders. It plans to train 100,000 people in the next 3 years and open 10 new Centres of Excellence across the country.

K Rajaraman, Secretary, DoT, said: “India with a vast gamut of telecom and network related services has an immense opportunity for skilling and growth. A levelled progression in the skilling requirement will ensure progression and a deeper look at the technological changes along with skilling will ensure upgradation, make the workforce more relevant for future. This would require a tremendous amount of follow ups within the IT systems with high reliability which will enable affordable upskilling/reskilling."

“Opportunities in 5G with the enormous use cases it will permit in industrial settings and customer experience such as in AR/VR, IoT, etc and with its nature of capabilities will require new range of skills required to manage use case development,” he added.

Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary, MSDE said, “In next decades, technological changes will be there but the human nature will remain the same. Telecom is embedded in every sector such as entertainment, construction, agriculture, etc, right from production to the distribution. It is important to train the workforce to use these new technologies in a much more effective fashion. When we talk about jobs in telecom sector, we should not talk about only the jobs here but how they need some kind of upskilling.”

“We have achieved great success over the years in skilling the youth of India. We now plan to accelerate skilling initiatives to international regions and map the international workforce demand. We will achieve the Hon’ble Prime Ministers' vision to make India the skill capital of the world,” said Akhil Gupta Vice Chairman, Bharti Group.

Arvind Bali CEO, TSSC, said: “We are focused on providing the workforce demand for the growth of 5G ecosystem in India. The ecosystem is seeing a big influx of manufacturing units with approval for PLI in telecom equipment, electronics, and handset manufacturing. With OEMs setting shop in India, they will need a plethora of job roles to set up their supply chain. We aim to aid the ecosystem with a world-class skilled workforce for 5G and its allied technologies.”