Future of Telecom Jobs?

Yesterday got a call from a friend who happens to be a my colleague from my second company and he was bit anxious about his career and was not sure what he should do next.

Almost everyone of us is going through the similar questions and this Covid-19 has fueled these anxiety further because of lot of people losing their jobs and business uncertainties.

Many of us are working in Telecom from last 15+ years and worked with technologies ranging from Wireline to 2G , 3G , 4G and now moving towards 5G , however the kind of changes what 5G brings in , requires a major overhaul for our existing Telecom Skills.

A lot of buzz words around us like Cloud Computing , Artificial intelligence , Machine Learning , Data Analytics , SDN, NFV , Big Data , Cyber Security , IoT , M2M , Open RAN , Cloud based Core Networks. Everybody is confused what shall we do next to survive this changing Telecom Industry landscape.

So What are the skills we need to learn for Surviving in this Industry for next 5 Years or so ?

So here we walk about about few skills , which we will need to learn to survive -

Cloud Computing -

Cloud is the next big thing happening to Telecom Industry as most of the new Core Networks will be based on Cloud and even existing core networks are moving to Cloud or COTS Infrastructures. Don't expect these networks to be based on AWS or Azure as no operators will take risk to be dependent on these Cloud provider but yes AWS, Azure can be good starting point for learning Cloud Computing.

Open RAN

Open RAN is one of the hottest topics in Telecom World today and every operator in the world is looking for solution on Open RAN .

Cloud based core is already becoming commodity , and operator are also looking for commodity hardware also for Radio Networks and get away with their dependency on OEM's.

SDN , NFV and Virtualization

As 5G Radio and Core , both looking for Virtualization , SDN/NFV/Virtualization will be a great enablers for NextGen Networks

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

NextGen Networks are going to be driven by Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning as the Network management has to be automated and most of the FCAPS functions should be take care by automation.

Also there will be lot of AI/ML intervention on user generated data as well.

Big Data

Telecom networks always generate huge amount of Data and this gold mine of data which was hugely unexplored till now , going to bring new avenues of revenues for operators.

Cyber Security

Of course opening up these networks for 3rd parties , is going to bring new security challenges for Telecom networks and We need to answer those challenges to make our 5G networks Secure

Use Cases

5G Networks are going to driven by use cases and there is also going to be lot of Private 5G Networks , this area is something unexplored by previous generation of networks and going to very exciting to see the growth here.

Many of these use case will be fueled by new enablers in 5G like Network Slicing , Edge Computing , Private 5G Networks , Network Exposure , Orchestration etc

There can be many more and feel free to add your points in comment section.

Sanjay Kumar , Telecom/Cloud Trainer and consultant

www.NanoCellNetworks.com

#5G #5GNR #5GTechnology

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