The Telecom Sector Skill Council (TSSC) has 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 of over 150,000 in roles in 5G, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics, internet of things (IoT), mobile app-development and robotic process automation – the demand supply gap is almost 28 per cent. 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 (CoE) across the country.
The launch event was attended by various dignitaries from the ministries, industry, and academia who deliberated the steps to be taken to achieve workforce skilling and optimisation for the next phase of India’s economic growth where telecom is an important pivot. The report launch witnessed the presence of Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE); K Rajaraman, secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), and Alkesh Kumar Sharma, secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Commenting on the launch Rajaraman, 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. We hope to address policy issues like low penetration of broadband, right-of-way (RoW) issues and the industry needs to proliferate at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30-40 per cent in order to create phenomenal jobs. TSSC should put in place set of occupational categories such as rural broadband technician which can support the development of BharatNet within the country especially rural areas. Opportunities in 5G with the enormous use cases it will permit in industrial settings and customer experience such as in augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), IoT, etc. and with its nature of capabilities will require new range of skills required to manage use case development. Hon’ble Prime Minister has also been talking about opportunities in space technology with new space startups and entities will ensure new range of jobs.”
Meanwhile, Aggarwal 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.”
The opening note was presented by Akhil Gupta (vice chairman, Bharti Group), president, TSSC, to introduce the dais and various key speakers. He said, “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”.
Additionally, 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 production linked incentive (PLI) in telecom equipment, electronics, and handset manufacturing. With original equipment manufacturers (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.”
TSSC plans to expand its existing infrastructure with 10 new CoEs across India and build the much-needed capacity to train a quality workforce on futuristic technologies such as 5G, IoT, AI, ML, machine-to-machine (M2M), etc.. The organisation will utilise funds from industry corporate social responsibility (CSR) budgets and other initiatives. They plan to expand to telecom manufacturing and service clusters where the need for a skilled workforce is paramount.
In addition to government schemes like PMKVY, DDU-GKY, NULM, ESDM etc., TSSC plans to expand internationally through collaborations with African and the Middle East nations. They are already in talks to launch courses recognised internationally for conventional job roles like handheld device repair as well as service-oriented job roles. In a staggered manner, advanced job roles will be then cascaded to these international regions.
