may 2021 telecom workforce needs in a 5g world
Post on 15-Jun-2022
4 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Telecom workforce needs in a 5G worldBy Kelly Hill
M AY 2 0 2 1
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
2
Exactly one week after President
Joe Biden took office, a dozen tele-
communications advocacy groups
sent a letter to the newly inaugu-
rated president and both houses
of Congress. In it, the groups urged
the federal government that if they
were considering major infrastruc-
ture investments to improve con-
nectivity during the pandemic and
stimulate the economy through in-
vesting in broadband, that they also
put a correspondingly large amount
of investment into making sure that
there are enough trained workers to
deploy that infrastructure.
“The U.S. currently faces a short-
fall of skilled workers needed to de-
ploy broadband across the country,
to win the race to 5G, and to ensure
robust fiber, mobile, and fixed wire-
less networks,” the groups, includ-
ing CTIA, the Wireless Infrastruc-
ture Association, TIA, CCA and
others wrote in the letter. “Needed
investments in broadband infra-
structure will increase demand on
a labor force already in short sup-
ply. To improve the efficiency of
federal funding, a corresponding
initiative is needed to develop a
workforce properly trained with
the skills to deploy next generation
wired and wireless networks.”
The number of people working in
telecommunications has decreased
steadily since its peak in the 2007,
according to figures from the Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics. But 2020,
with its surge of work, learn and so-
cialize-from-home, showed just how
much of a lifeline that connectivity
is. But deploying wireless networks
calls for a unique combination of
skills that cross industries: Con-
struction and engineering, electri-
cal, fiber installation, RF expertise.
5G promises to not only place new
and different demands on the tele-
com workforce, but it promises to
transform the workforce at large.
Predictions for 5G workforce impacts
Let’s start off by looking at some of
the predictions for how 5G is, and will,
impact the U.S. workforce overall.
An IHS Markit study in 2019 es-
timated that 5G will generate 22.3
million jobs around the world by
2035. An updated IHS Markit/Om-
dia analysis in late 2020, accounting
for the pandemic, bumped up that
figure to 22.8 million jobs. Around
half of those jobs are expected to
be located in China, but the U.S. is
expected to see nearly 3 million.
An economic analysis by
Accenture, released in February,
estimates that between 2021-2015,
5G will add up $1.5 trillion to U.S.
GDP and that 5G “has the poten-
tial to create or transform up to 16
million jobs across all sectors of the
economy,” a figure that includes
full-time, part-time and temporary
jobs. Accenture also said that “mul-
tiplier effects will be felt in every
industry,” and that every direct job
created by 5G within the Informa-
tion and Communications Tech-
nologies (ICT) sector is expected to
create an estimated 1.8 additional
jobs, for a total of up to 2.8 total jobs
throughout the economy. In ICT, for
instance, Accenture estimates that
there will be 1.2 million direct jobs
added by 5G, plus another 1 million
indirect jobs and 1.2 million more
“induced” jobs as a result of house-
hold spending created from those
additional jobs. Accenture breaks
down numbers on a per-state basis,
ranging from up to 40,000 new jobs
in North Dakota, to up to 2.4 million
jobs in California.
A recent report from Boston Con-
sulting Group estimated that in the
U.S., 5G deployment will contribute
$1.4 trillion to $1.7 trillion to nation-
al GDP over the next 10 years and
create 3.8 million to 4.6 million jobs
during that period. That estimated
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
3
growth covers both direct infra-
structure investment and deploy-
ment of the networks (about 30% of
the total) as well as indirect growth
in jobs and revenues as 5G enables
innovation in other industries
(about 70% of the total). “At first, 5G
will contribute to economic activi-
ty directly through network infra-
structure deployment,” the report
says. “But as 5G networks continue
to roll out and improve, an even
greater wave of economic activity
will occur indirectly as the networks
enable new and improved use cases
across industries. These will deliv-
er significant socioeconomic ben-
efits through higher productivity,
improved cost competitiveness, and
better health and safety.”
The BCG report also makes some
regional estimates of 5G GDP im-
pacts, saying that while all of the
U.S. will benefit, “regions with a
“broader base of industries are like-
ly to see more balanced, indirect 5G
growth as those companies adopt
new technologies such as smart sen-
sors, virtual and augmented reality,
and cloud computing. A region’s
demographic characteristics such
as age, education, and income will
also influence how much and how
quickly 5G contributes to the local
economy.” The report estimates
that for the 10-year period between
2020 and 2030, 5G deployment will
create 800,000 to 1 million jobs from
direct spending on capital and la-
bor. Most of those jobs will be in
construction, information services
and manufacturing of infrastruc-
ture-related equipment. But about
70% of the total value generated by
5G, the BCG report said, will be re-
alized in indirect 5G benefits, as 5G
transforms industries other than
ICT itself. Those indirect impacts,
it said, will create $1-1.2 trillion in
value and 3-3.6 million jobs by 2030
in verticals such as finance, trans-
portation and even manufacturing,
where 5G could help U.S. factories
to become globally competitive in
efficiency and cost-effectiveness,
drawing jobs back from overseas.
The Progressive Policy Institute
released analysis in the fall of 2020
estimating that 5G and related
technologies will create 4.6 million
additional jobs by 2034. The paper
estimated that as of April/May
2020, current 5G build-out and en-
gineering activities were creating
106,000 jobs.
“In an important sense, 5G job
creation is a countervailing force
to job destruction from automation
and globalization, and critically im-
portant in the post-COVID world,”
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
4
the think tank’s authors wrote.
The LTE-fueled transition to an
app economy created mostly “cog-
nitive” tech jobs which required a
college education. 5G, the authors
said, will drive many more cog-
nitive tech jobs, but will also fuel
demand for “mixed ‘cognitive-phys-
ical” skilled jobs, many of which
fall into the category of installers
and maintainers, giving examples
such as field sensor technicians,
construction drone operators and
robotics maintenance.
The study’s authors also make
the point that employment statis-
tics projected by the federal Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics often miss
the impacts of new technologies
– for example, its projections for
telecom industry jobs predicted a
drop from 1993 to 2000 and ended
up being off by 50% as the industry
saw jobs explode, driven by 2G/3G
growth. The BLS numbers for em-
ployment in the wireless industry
peaked in 2007 and fell by half by
2019 – but, the PPI authors said, “In
fact, wireless was creating jobs, but
not in the wireless industry. More
and more IT professionals were in-
volved in either developing mobile
apps, maintaining them after they
were on the market, or supporting
them with users.” But those jobs
weren’t “in” wireless, by BLS reck-
oning – a category for app develop-
ers didn’t even exist, for example,
but there was a surge in people
working in “computer and math-
ematical occupations.” The same
authors estimated in 2012 that,
based on analysis of job postings,
the “app economy” was supporting
466,000 jobs, which grew to more
than 2.2 million by April 2019 – rep-
resenting annual growth of more
than 20%.
The “second wave” of wireless
innovation, or the app economy,
focused on industries “where the
output can be reduced to bits and
bytes”: Content, social networks,
ecommerce – and those make up
less than 20% of the economy, the
PPI said. What they called the “5G
revolution” is “based on the ap-
plications of wireless to the chal-
lenges and opportunities in physi-
cal industries, such as agriculture,
energy, construction, manufac-
turing, transportation, education,
healthcare, and government (in-
cluding defense).” The fact that
5G will straddle both the digital
and physical worlds means that in
addition to the type of high-pay-
ing tech jobs that came with the
Cognitive and cognitive-physical
job titles in a 5G world:
Cognitive:
Precision agriculture application developer
Smart grid analyst
Digital manufacturing platform developer
Mobile logistics analyst
Online learning platform specialist
Health cloud information security specialist
Government database privacy specialist
Cognitive-Physical:
Field sensor technician
Construction drone operator
Household smart meter maintenance
Robotics maintenance
Autonomous vehicle maintenance
Telehealth installer
Tactical communications specialist
Elementary-high school telecom help desk
Sou
rce:
Pro
gres
sive
Pol
icy
Inst
itu
te
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
5
app economy, 5G is expected to
“generate blue-collar jobs that
use a combination of manual and
problem-solving skills … which
are likely to pay a wage premium
as well.”
Telecom 5G needs in a 5G world
Overall, the U.S. telecommuni-
cations industry employs 672,000
workers, with average annual wag-
es that exceed $77,500, according to
figures from the joint association’s
letter to Biden. “At the current rate
of deployment, there will be 850,000
more new direct broadband and 5G
jobs through 2025, which federal
support would accelerate. While
the jobs are there, our American
workforce is not currently ready to
fill them,” the letter said.
There are two broad factors at
work here: There is massive net-
work investment going on as the in-
dustry transitions to 5G and brings
an enormous amount of new spec-
trum online for which carriers have
paid billions of dollars over the past
few years. That drives demand for
boots-on-the-ground deployment
workers. At the same time, network
operators have been accelerating
their investments in digitalization
and network virtualization, which
is shifting the desired skillset on
the network operations and man-
agement side.
Digging into those two facets a lit-
tle deeper, the drivers include:
Software-centrism and the move from
virtualization to cloud-native
AT&T, for example, made a ma-
jor push to control core network
functions over the past several
years, reaching its goal of 75% vir-
tualization at the end of last year.
Verizon, though it has not been
quite as public about it as AT&T,
also made a major push to virtu-
alize over the past few years and
last August, even announced what
it said was the first first end-to-
end — meaning from the core of
the network to the far edge of the
network — fully virtualized 5G
data session. Virtualization itself
continues to evolve, both in terms
of further disaggregation of net-
work elements and in the push for
Open Radio Access Networks.
Multi-Access edge computing (MEC)
MEC is an integral part of deliver-
ing a user experience aligned with
expectations for 5G, particularly
in an industrial setting. Verizon is
partnering with AWS in 10 markets
currently, in order to make compute
resources available that will de-
liver that experience and do so on
a computing platform familiar to
developers – Amazon Wavelength.
The full impact of MEC deployment
has yet to be felt, and it’s unclear
just how deep the network “edge”
will go (to every cell site?) – but
compute will be more distributed,
certainly, and that will mean a scal-
ing-up in the number of locations
where compute must be managed,
as well as the questions of who
manages it, how edge applications
are architected and managed, and
the relationship of the edge to the
rest of the network.
Automation
While there is still a sizable gap be-
tween what automation could theo-
retically achieve and what it is ac-
tually achieving, there is a push for
increased automation at all levels
that is directly impacting workers.
Unprecedented demands for densifi-
cation and scale
Demand for cellular connectivity
continues to increase – CTIA has
said that mobile usage increased
40% in the past year, while mobile
network median speeds increased
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
6
nearly 50%. Carriers continue to
densify their networks, deploying
additional fiber and sites, in order
to meet that demand. They’re also
working to support new bands:
Since 2019, the FCC has auctioned
5,3800 megahertz of spectrum
from 3.5 GHz all the way up to 47
GHz, most of it in millimeter-wave
bands that require significantly
higher levels of site density – and
that figure doesn’t include the 100
megahertz at 3.45-3.55 that the FCC
plans to auction this fall. Verizon,
by far the biggest spender in the C
Band auction, has made deploying
the spectrum a top priority and ex-
pects to have between 7,000-8,000
sites ready to go by the end of this
year, when the first tranche of C
Band spectrum will be available
for use, and has committed $10 bil-
lion over three years — in addition
to its expected capex of $17.5-$18.5
billion — for deployment.
Figuring out a post-pandemic world
Telecom networks have been a life-
line amid the global pandemic, sup-
porting everything from telehealth
to distance learning to working
from home, on a massive scale. And
overall, U.S. and global networks
generally held up well. It remains
to be seen just how many of the
changes of the past year will stick,
but it seems reasonable that there
will be an elevated level of work-
ing and learning from home for the
short-to-medium term, and possibly
longer. Some tech companies, such
as Twitter, have announced that
they plan to permanently move to a
work-from-home model.
As federal, state and local govern-
ments look for ways to stimulate
the economy, they are likely to look
to broadband, which generally en-
joys bipartisan support. The federal
government has already kicked off
a $3.2 billion emergency broadband
benefit program through the Feder-
al Communications Commission to
subsidize the cost of monthly broad-
band service during the course of
the pandemic, up to $50 per month
for most U.S. households and up to
$75 for households on Tribal lands.
The Biden administration is also
negotiating a plan for what it hopes
will be a multi-trillion-dollar eco-
nomic stimulus package and is ex-
pected to include large investments
in 5G, rural broadband and bol-
stering domestic tech and telecom
sectors – and, as the coalition of
industry groups hoped, workforce
training and development.
Challenges for the broadband net-
work deployment workforce
When Leticia Latino van
Splunteren, CEO of Florida-based
Neptuno USA saw the workforce
letter that was sent to Biden, she
didn’t just see it as a request from
trade groups – it was also the result
of an effort to pull together differ-
ent sectors who were facing many
of the same workforce challenges.
Latino is the chair of the Federal
“Although telecom is so pre-dominant in our daily lives — we all hold a cell phone, we all know what telecom is — it’s amazing that our telecom jobs are not well known.”
Leticia Latino van Splunteren, CEO, Neptune USA Neptuno USA
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
7
Communications Commission’s
Broadband Deployment Advisory
Committee on job skills and train-
ing opportunities. She sees some
of the challenges facing the indus-
try in microcosm on a daily basis,
which helped to inform a BDAC
report published last year.
“Although telecom is so predomi-
nant in our daily lives — we all hold
a cell phone, we all know what tele-
com is — it’s amazing that our tele-
com jobs are not well known,” says
Latino van Splunteren. “People for
whatever reason, they don’t see
their careers in the telecommuni-
cations industry.” She cited a NATE
survey from 2020 which found that
63% of NATE members companies
relied on recruiting by network-
ing or word of mouth – and that’s a
problem. “We are hiring from word
of mouth – one of the most tech-
nologically advanced industries
there is,” she points out. One of the
solutions that the BDAC committee
proposed was in order that telecom
organizations and those from oth-
er industries who rely on workers
with overlapping skillsets — con-
struction and electrical systems
experience, for example — should
form a coalition to jointly advo-
cate for workforce initiatives and
coordinate industry efforts. That
letter to President Biden was a step
in that direction. “I think we need
to do more of that, so I was very
happy to see that done,” Latino van
Splunteren says. The involvement
of multiple industries also reflects
a potential solution to the percep-
tion that a telecom technician is a
limited career. If telecom training
programs include upskilling and
cross-training across multiple skill
sets, Latino van Splunteren says,
then they become more valuable
to workers who value flexibility
and the ability to work in multi-
ple fields, and enlarge the pool of
workers that multiple industries
can draw from.
Network technicians who can
properly and efficiently install
fiber, power and radio equipment
to telecommunications sites are in
high demand across the country –
and there simply aren’t enough of
them to do all the work as fast as
operators would like. In addition,
efforts to bridge the digital divide
through new funding for broad-
band can only come to fruition as
fast as networks can be built. Mean-
while, broadband demand overall
has only been intensified by the
pandemic, even as carriers have
had to find ways to reduce in-home
visits and nudge customers toward
self-installation and remote access
to test and monitor their networks.
The report from Latino van Splun-
teren’s BDAC committee said last
year there are around 29,000 broad-
band-related technicians employed
in the U.S., and that number will
need to increase by 20,000 in the
next decade in order to accommo-
date broadcast repacking as well
as expand universal broadband,
public safety networks and 5G.
Telecommunications crews “can-
not keep pace with the [broadband]
expansion without more skilled
hands on deck,” the BDAC’s job
skills working group concluded in a
report published last fall.
That report relied on interviews
with stakeholders across the indus-
try to identify the challenges to ex-
panding the telecom network work-
force, as well as potential solutions to
pursue. The seven challenges were:
1. A broadband brand “identity crisis”
Simply put, students and work-
ers don’t know much if anything
about the telecom industry and the
careers it offers, how to get pre-
pared for such jobs, or what various
career trajectories in the industry
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
8
that do exist are highly regional
and produce only a small number
of graduates each year. Current
broadband technicians ideally
have multiple skill sets that defy
typical categorizations (for exam-
ple, construction skills as well as
familiarity with installing power
and fiber, as well as RF knowledge)
for recruiting and training pur-
poses. In addition, the report said,
a “general lack of industry stan-
dardization ... makes it difficult
[for institutions and training pro-
grams] to develop effective curric-
ula for specialized training” that
both allows employees to advance
their careers and meets the needs
of employers. Other training can
be so specific to services or equip-
ment vendors that employees don’t
gain a broad set of skills. While
the report identifies a number of
successful training programs that
exist, scale remains an issue.
3. Lack of awareness of, and a lack
of, federal and state funding for
training programs
Skilled workers are hard to find.
When employers invest in training
for unskilled workers, they often
try to hold onto newly trained em-
ployees with service commitments,
so that employee doesn’t immedi-
ately head to a competitor. But, the
report said, there is “a significant
lack of knowledge and unaware-
ness by employers and training
providers alike regarding historical
grant vehicles and grant agencies
that can assist them” and defray
some of the costs of training new
employees, hopefully making em-
ployers more open to taking on un-
skilled employees.
4. Lack of standardized job codes
and categories, wages and
universal credentialing
In order to retain employees,
employers need insights into
what constitutes competitive
looks like. “Most potential workers
are not aware that there exists a
broadband industry, nor do they
know how to enter the relevant
field in the industry,” the report
said, adding, “If potential workers
and students do not know what the
career paths are, or how to enter
the industry, there is no starting
point from which to begin.”
2. A dearth of standardized and
nationwide training programs.
There is no uniform credential-
ing for specific job titles, there ar-
en’t many broadband technician
training programs and the ones
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
9
wages and benefits and good work-
ing conditions across the industry –
otherwise they may very well have
employees leave for better opportu-
nities. The report noted as an exam-
ple that for a “telecommunications
technician” job opening posted by
three different telecom companies,
the pay varied by $17 per hour, from
about $21 per hour to $38 per hour.
Regionalization plays a role in the
variance, but better data tracking
and visibility across the industry
might help with both employee and
employer expectations.
5. The work is seasonal, demand
fluctuates and multiple factors
limit the pool of workers
Finding potential workers who
are comfortable with working
at heights on telecom towers is a
challenge in itself. In addition, the
report says, broadband workers
have to be on-call and on the road
frequently, and depending on the
climate and season, the demand for
workers can fluctuate significant-
ly – so jobs may be very demanding,
but not necessarily steady. “Many
broadband industry workers or po-
tential workers might view the job
security issue differently if alter-
native industry career options, and
upskilling and other training pro-
grams, were available during peri-
ods when the peak demand is over,”
the report notes. Requirements for
a commercial drivers license (CDL)
can further limit the potential pool
of workers, and the fact that CDLs
can’t be obtained until people are
21 years old means that it’s also dif-
ficult for workers to jump straight
into broadband deployment jobs
from high school or junior college.
6. A dwindling skilled workforce
because of retirements
This is a national trend facing
multiple industries as the Baby
Boomers age – but the report points
out the seeming contradiction that
while there are not enough young-
er workers to fill telecom needs,
it’s also the case that broadband
industry workers often get laid off
before retirement age. During eco-
nomic downturns or slowdowns in
network deployment cycles, who
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
10
is most likely to be laid off? The
youngest and most inexperienced
workers tend to be first, then those
with less experience. Companies
are left with their most experi-
enced employees, but they have
reduced the pipeline of internal
candidates who will have enough
experience to competently fill
those older workers’ shoes when
they retire.
Christopher Shelton, president
of the Communications Workers of
America union that includes about
150,000 telecom workers, took that
point even further and essentially
argued before a House subcommit-
tee earlier this year that telecom
companies have shot themselves
in the foot when it comes to their
workforces, via layoffs and subcon-
tracting. He called it “misinforma-
tion” that there aren’t enough skilled
workers, saying instead that the
problem is that telecom companies
don’t want to pay sufficient wages
to attract those skilled (and possibly,
unionized) workers. He also cited a
CWA analysis found that AT&T has
used more than 700 contractors to
build and maintain its network over
the past four years and said that
“The small contractors at the bot-
tom of this pyramid compete largely
on labor costs, squeezing their work-
ers and cutting corners that risk
safety and quality of work.” mis-
information. “I know many of you
have heard about alleged worker
shortages in the telecommunica-
tions industry in recent months,” he
told the committee. “I urge you to be
skeptical of these claims. AT&T and
other telecom companies have laid
off tens of thousands of workers in
the past few years, including thou-
sands of well-trained construction
technicians, while non-union con-
tractor companies claim they can’t
find qualified workers.” A labor
shortage, Shelton said, should lead
to increased wages – but he cited an-
other study from the Economic Pol-
icy Institute which found that for
some telecom workers, their wages
have actually declined in real terms
since the 1970s.
7. The Covid-19 pandemic means a
“new normal” that is still being fig-
ured out -- for everyone, including the
telecom workforce
The pandemic has driven a shift
from very low unemployment, and
the accompanying recruitment
challenges, to much higher unem-
ployment and a different set of cir-
cumstances under which employers
and employees are working. This
affected the BDAC working group’s
focus as well, in a way that tracks
with the overall employment envi-
ronment. “At the beginning of 2020,
the Working Group focused on ways
to attract fully employed individu-
als away from their current fields.
Then, in April, the focus shifted to
how to effectively recruit unem-
ployed individuals into the field and
train them quickly and effectively,”
the report says. “The COVID-19 envi-
ronment transformed the challenge
from finding enough candidates
into creating pathways to industry
careers by focusing on education
and training of workers including
the unemployed.” But the pandemic
is also creating new challenges for
training and educating new telecom
workers, among them budget cuts
and programming reductions at ac-
ademic institutions.
Network management and operations
skills in a virtualized 5G world
Rakuten Mobile positions it-
self as a forerunner of the new
software-centric mobile network
paradigm, having commercially
launched a cloud-native 4G/5G net-
work and also offering its Rakuten
Communications Platform to other
South Dakota’s Southeast Technical College
offers one example of a comprehensive train-
ing program that has been put together as a
result of conversations with partners in the in-
dustry and refined to meet both workers’ and
employers’ needs.
Southeast Tech serves the southeast quad-
rant of South Dakota, including the Sioux Falls
area where it is based.
As Dr. Benjamin Valdez, Southeast Tech’s VP
of academic affairs puts it, the program began
as a result of casual conversations with a local
telecommunications construction firm, Vikor
Teleconstruction. Todd Thorin, who is director
of safety and training at Vikor (formerly Sioux
Falls Tower) employer, stopped in to the cam-
pus while the company was doing some work
nearby -- Vikor’s Sioux Falls office is less than
three miles away and the company frequently
does local and regional network deployments,
including 5G small cells for Verizon -- and
started asking questions about its programs
and whether the technical college might be
able to provide training for telecom workers.
“The conversation went from us providing
training, to Vikor and Southeast Tech part-
nering to deliver a training program to serve
the teleconstruction community and its needs
with the extension of 5G,” Valdez recalled. Very
quickly, those conversations became part of a
national conversation around meeting broad-
band workforce needs in a 5G world. South-
east Tech came to the attention of Senator
John Thune (R-SD), who at the time was serv-
ing as chairman of the Senate subcommittee
on communications, technology, and innova-
tion and has repeatedly co-sponsored bills
related to telecom workforce development,
including as recently as February of this year.
Conversations with Thune led to conversa-
tions with other senators interested in sup-
porting tech workforce development, industry
groups including the National Association of
Tower Erectors (NATE) and with the Federal
Communications Commission, which Valdez
said held several open houses on the South-
east Tech campus to discuss the expansion of
5G and the network needs of rural America.
As for Southeast Tech’s progam itself, it
initially launched solely to focus on providing
students a path to earn the Telecommunica-
tions Tower Technician (TTT) certification that
would enable them to learn how to safe-
ly climb towers and do basic installation of
network equipment. The classroom portion
of the certification is held at Southeast Tech
(or, since the pandemic, online) and hands-
on climbing and other skills are taught at
Vikor’s specialized facility, by Vikor employees
who are already certified and teach on eve-
nings and weekends, Valdez said. But Val-
dez said that even though the program was
well-received in that form and produced sev-
eral graduates who immediately went to work
using those the certifications, further conver-
sations with industry showed that there was
a greater need than the very safety-focused
TTT1 and TTT2 certifications. The TTT1 and TTT2
progams were just a matter of weeks -- but
because they were certifications rather than
diplomas/full academic programs, students
weren’t eligible for most financial aid. That
limited the program to students who could
pay out of pocket, or who had been sponsored
by an employer. AT&T stepped in and funded
some full scholarships as well.
So Southeast Tech retooled the program,
which now includes the TTT certifications fo-
cused on tower climbing, safety and physical
installation of gear, but also allows students to
choose a track focused on tower construction
How SouthEast Tech put together a telecom technician program
and related skills; or electrical systems and re-
lated skills to powering the tower and the gear
on it. It’s now a one-year diploma program --
which allows students to apply for regular fi-
nancial aid for the approximately $7,500 cost,
and will hopefully help the program draw more
interest and participation.
“We’ve actually rewritten our entire program,
to where the TTT is still the focal point, but stu-
dents can then earn an actual diploma -- a
one-year diploma -- and they can specialize in
either the construction methodology and con-
struction techniques, [or] they can specialize
in the electrical systems side,” Valdez said,
adding that this makes them more broadly
skilled and more valuable to their employers.
In addition, Valdez said, graduates some out
with not just the TTT certification but an OSHA
30 certification; they can also choose to em-
bed emergency medical technician training
from another Southeast Tech track that would
allow them to get licensed as an EMT. Valdez
said that Southeast Tech was told that when
operating in rural areas, having someone on-
site with EMT skills, who can help treat or at
least stabilize someone who is injured, is a
valuable resource.
“We’re trying to really meet the needs of the
workforce and ensure that students have that
ability to really be successful as the move into
their careers and into industry,” Valdez said.
“Any time you have an employee who is more
well-rounded, they’re going to become more
valuable to the organization and the organiza-
tion can use them as a multi-faceted employ-
ee versus a one-track employee. Being able to
provide that really is what our goal is.”
Plus, building in multiple skill-sets to the
program, from medical response to electrical
systems to construction, means that gradu-
ates have multiple potential career paths or
fall-backs in an industry that can be highly
seasonal or boom-and-bust depending on
the network life cycle. “That’s what we really
strive for, to be as creative as possible so that
if something doesn’t work out, [students] have
something else to fall back on,” Valdez added.
“We’re always looking with all of our programs
to build little things in so that students have
multiple pathways, they’re just not locked in
and that’s the end.”
There have been a number of challenges
that Southeast Tech has navigated in trying to
make the program work for both students and
employers. Making the program a diploma
rather than just a TTT certification was one.
Finding the type of student who is well-suited
to the program -- and to working at height
-- is another.
“Students seem to be extremely interested
in the program. The challenge is finding that
individual that has the stamina to climb a tow-
er and be up that high in high winds and freez-
ing rain and snow,” Valdez said. “We’ve had a
lot of students come in and when they actually
tour the facility ... they’ve had a lot of second
thoughts, you know, ‘climbing up that high just
really is not my forte.’” He said that Southeast
Tech is working with Vikor and AT&T to add
small-cell installation training to the program,
possibly later this year or early next year -- and
the fact that working with small cells happens
at lower heights or from bucket trucks could
entice more people to the field.
Employers, he said, are “excited about what
our students can do as they come out. That’s
just less training that they have to do, it allows
them to get them focused on their own proce-
dures, versus the telecommunications end or
climbing towers or safety,” Valdez said. “They’re
already certified and ready to hit that ground
running. Vikor and several other construction
companies have said the graduates are going
to allow them to take on more work and actu-
ally do more, because they’re not having to try
and figure out how they’re going to train peo-
ple. So I think on both sides it’s been received
very well.”
While Southeast Tech has drawn from in-
dustry conversations and some of the few ex-
amples of similar programs -- Valdez says that
Southeast spoke several times with peers from
Aiken Technical College in South Carolina, an-
other one of the few academic institutions that
offers a program specifically for telecom work-
ers -- the program is still evolving. He hopes
that the program, when it begins enrollment
again in the fall, with build on its early success
as well as new lessons learned, and provide a
broad range of skills to prepare both men and
women to enter the telecom workforce.
“We’re kind of, you could say, building this
airplane as we’re flying through the air,” Val-
dez said, adding that Southeast Tech hopes to
continue learning and modifying the program
to meet changes in the industry and build-
ing something that appeals to students. “It’s
challenging in education when you’re building
programs -- especially like this, where it’s a
new industry, a new field [that has] never real-
ly relied on higher education for a workforce.”
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
13
CSPs who wish to take the same ap-
proach. That also means a different
approach to the network workforce.
“The skill sets to run and manage
a software network platform, in
my view, needs to be a remarkably
different skill set. The challenges
are very, very different,” said Tareq
Amin, group CTO of Rakuten Mo-
bile. “If you come into our opera-
tion room, you’ll discover that the
traditional organization structure
of operations just doesn’t exist. We
only hire people that have soft-
ware backgrounds and capability.
We have quite a [few Site reliability
engineers] running and managing
this network.”
In addition, he says, the differenc-
es don’t just extend to software en-
gineering skill sets, but to mentality
and culture. “If you look at tradi-
tionally what we have done in tele-
com, you know, we always followed
standard method of procedures, var-
ious checklists. Well, these check-
lists maybe could have been created
a decade ago and maybe today they
don’t apply. These checklists today
have been transformed from more
documents to digitized workflows
and that’s really fundamentally
required a cultural awareness that
writing code to address automation
is a critical thing -- finding every op-
portunity that there is manual work
that is happening.
“I told my team … ‘Wouldn’t life be
easier if you didn’t have to wake up
at night because of outages? I want
you to have balance in your life,’”
Amin said. “In that context, we fo-
cus and do two things. One is the
skill sets for sure. If you don’t have
a software background, I think you
will struggle to sustain and develop
your career as the network moves
into a software architecture and a
software platform. So reskilling ex-
isting resources is very important
and hiring the right talent and the
RCR Wireless News reached out to Verizon’s Adam Koeppe, senior vice president of network technology and planning, to discuss how Verizon’s workforce needs are evolving. This interview was conducted via email and has been condensed and lightly edited.
How are Verizon’s workforce needs evolving
as we move into a more distributed, soft-
ware-centric 5G world? What are the key
drivers for those changes?
The skills our Global Network and Technology
professionals need have been evolving with
our technology. We have been leading the in-
dustry on virtualization from the core to the
edge of our network. The disaggregation and
decoupling of the compute functions from the
software requires that our team has the skills
to remotely manage our network regardless of
software provider. Whereas in the past, part-
nerships with vendors and familiarity with a
certain type of hardware was paramount, ex-
pertise related to software defined networking,
cloud networks, and artificial intelligence have
become far more important.
What skills sets or certifications are you
looking for (particularly in a network man-
agement/operations context) that perhaps
weren’t as in-demand 4-5 years ago?
Cloud certifications have gained increasing
importance. A combination of cloud-native
and network-centric skills are of particular
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
14
value in our environment. Security certifica-
tions and skills continue to be in high de-
mand as we protect the networks. AI and
ML certifications and skills are increasing in
importance as we strive to increase our net-
work’s ability to self-diagnose and self-he-
al. Our internal list of in-demand skills with
short supply includes cloud infrastructure
engineering, virtual network engineering, net-
work software and systems integrators, ma-
chine learning data scientists, cloud-native
software developers and security specialists,
among others.
How are Verizon’s workforce needs evolving
as we move into a more distributed, soft-
ware-centric 5G world? What are the key
drivers for those changes?
The skills our Global Network and Technology
professionals need have been evolving with
our technology. We have been leading the in-
dustry on virtualization from the core to the
edge of our network. The disaggregation and
decoupling of the compute functions from the
software requires that our team has the skills
to remotely manage our network regardless of
software provider. Whereas in the past, part-
nerships with vendors and familiarity with a
certain type of hardware was paramount, ex-
pertise related to software defined networking,
cloud networks, and artificial intelligence have
become far more important.
What skills sets or certifications are you
looking for (particularly in a network man-
agement/operations context) that perhaps
weren’t as in-demand 4-5 years ago?
Cloud certifications have gained increasing
importance. A combination of cloud-native
and network-centric skills are of particular val-
ue in our environment. Security certifications
and skills continue to be in high demand as
we protect the networks. AI and ML certifica-
tions and skills are increasing in importance
as we strive to increase our network’s ability
to self-diagnose and self-heal. Our internal list
of in-demand skills with short supply includes
cloud infrastructure engineering, virtual net-
work engineering, network software and sys-
tems integrators, machine learning data sci-
entists, cloud-native software developers and
security specialists, among others.
What kind of companies are you com-
peting with for employees? (Other CSPs,
webscale companies, systems integrators,
etc.?) Has that changed at all over the
past few years?
Verizon is an exceptional place to work and
we’re seeing candidates choose to work with
the V-Team who historically would have worked
at CSPs, cloud companies, etc. There is al-
ways competition for the best people and that
competition continues to heighten as we mod-
ernize our network and our approach to man-
aging the network into a more cloud-centric
and software-centric approach. As we contin-
ue on our 5G journey and beyond, this is an
exciting time to be a part of Verizon. Our sys-
tems are only part of the equation – our peo-
ple differentiate us in the industry and we’ve
been able to bring in incredible talent to work
on the most exciting projects in the world.
.
Are there specific new titles, positions or
organizational structure within Verizon that
you think are indicative of the evolution of
the network?
We have seen an increase in positions focused
on cloud, data and artificial intelligence, and se-
curity. There is always a need for RF Engineering,
and now we see this skillset paired with comput-
er science and cloud computing to help enable
solution like virtual radio access networks.
What would your advice be to current telecom
workers (especially with network engineering
skills) who want to keep their skills current?
My advice would be to embrace change and
continuously update your skills. As technol-
ogists, we must stay current. There is a great
deal of education out there in the form of
courses, certifications, whitepapers, and oth-
er written material. For those already in the
field, embrace opportunities to move out of
your comfort zone into a role that will build
upon your skills.
What would your advice be to people looking
to get into the field of telecom? How can
they best prepare themselves?
“Telecom” has become a melting pot for all dif-
ferent types of technical aptitude, so first and
foremost, don’t limit yourself. A cloud-native,
network-centric background and technical ed-
ucation is valuable for those who are interested
in joining the network team. There are other
ways to join and grow within the organization
if someone doesn’t have that background. We
have network employees who joined the compa-
ny as a customer service representative, gained
familiarity with the business and our network,
and ultimately successfully applied for a role
within Global Network and Technology.
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
15
right pipeline of skills to be able to
look at today and tomorrow’s chal-
lenges in the software world is very,
very different. … The second pillar
is about this cultural awareness
that we need to transform, we need
to evolve from manual way[s] of
engagement and manual methods
of procedures into fully digitized
workflows, fully automated.
That requires a sustained, high
level of commitment within the
company to new processes, he says.
“You need to constantly push this
energy towards automation and to-
wards a discovery of problems and
solving these problems via code
rather than developing a manual
method of procedure to address the
issue that was discovered.”
Back in 2017, an EY telecom sur-
vey asked telecommunications
CIOs and CTOs what they thought
were the biggest opportunities and
obstacles facing them in the next
three years. Virtualization was al-
ready seen as one of the most im-
portant enablers of innovation. The
two biggest barriers to telco digital
transformation initiatives? Legacy
IT platforms and architectures, and
their workforces’ lack of skills and
expertise in digital domains.
In the years since, network
operators have increasingly moved
to embrace software-centric,
cloud-native and disaggregated
networks, from the Radio Access
Network to the core. They have
also invested in hiring and upskill-
ing their existing workforce to gain
more of the necessary skills to nav-
igate this network sea-change. But
with as quickly as technology is
changing, it’s a challenge for both
individuals and organizations as a
whole to keep up.
Richard Brandon, VP of market-
ing at cloud-native routing soft-
ware company RtBrick, says that
it’s important to recognize that
workforce issues are a limiting
factor on carriers’ ability to adopt
new software-based approaches, in
spite of desire to do so -- and not to
assume that things will somehow
work themselves out.
“We speak to a lot of big carriers
that have an appetite for disaggre-
gation, there’s no doubt about it,”
he says. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, we get
it, we see how it’s going to save us a
load of money, we can see how it’s
going to give us more flexibility, we
can see how we can roll out what-
ever services without waiting for
the two years for the next feature.’
So they get the case for it. And then
they sort of look at it and go ‘But,
we have thousands of operation-
al staff and they know how to do
what we do today, and this is differ-
ent, and therein lies our challenge.’
“I think it’s really important
to recognize and not just kind of
sweep that under the carpet and go
yeah, well, some guy in operations
will sort that out for you further
down the road,” he continues.
RtBrick provides routing soft-
ware that, as Brandon describes it,
turns bare-metal switches into a
telco MPLS IP router, rather than
the traditional route of buying an
integrated chassis with routing
software on it. “The same approach
that people are looking to take for
an open RAN, people are also look-
ing to put actually into their net-
work behind the RAN. ... But I think
it’s a much wider trend than just
any specific part of the network,”
Brandon says. “It’s the kind of thing
that we as an industry have been
talking around for a few years, and
it’s really kind of starting to feel
very tangible now.”
RTbrick’s cloud-native, full-stack
Broadband Network Gateway solu-
tion recently went live in Deutsche
Telekom’s broadband network.
The BNG terminates broadband
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
16
subscriber traffic and provides
other functions such as quality of
service, lawful intercept and IPTV.
Hans-Joerg Kolbe, chief product
owner Access 4.0 at Deutsche Tele-
kom, said in a statement at the time
that “Disaggregation represents a
new era for our network.” Mean-
while, Hannes Gredler, founder
and chief technology officer at Rt-
Brick, was using similarly lofty lan-
guage about the importance of the
move toward open software-based
networks. “The shift to building
networks using open software,
rather than proprietary systems, is
probably the most important devel-
opment the industry has seen since
the arrival of the Internet, and this
deployment is proof that cloud-na-
tive networks are ready for the
mainstream,” Gredler said.
“We wanted to embrace a new
cloud-native approach to building
and running our network. Disaggre-
gation allows us to independently
select the best hardware and soft-
ware for any job, it’s simpler to au-
tomate and it’s more flexible and
open than using traditional sys-
tems,” Kolbe added.
But disaggregation also demands
a very different skillset when it
comes to testing, integration and
management.
“There is no way [operators]
should be starting on a disaggre-
gation project without also saying
to themselves, ‘The long-term ben-
efit here is worth us changing our
skillset,’” Brandon says. Deutsche
Telekom, he adds. “had definitely
done that. They knew they had to
sort of rip up the rulebook when it
came to operational staff.” That’s
not to say that many of the same
networking skills and protocol
knowledge aren’t needed, he says.
But in a world of a limited num-
ber of network vendors, it often
was sufficient to learn just those
vendors’ proprietary inner work-
ings. In a world where operators
can actually do that independent
selection of hardware and soft-
ware that Kolbe references, Linux
knowledge and workflows for
cloud and cloud-based tools be-
come a crucial expertise.
More broadly, Brandon says,
F E A T U R E R E P O R T
17
when networks are purchased as
an integrated system, that means
vendors have done the integra-
tion for you. In a disaggregated
network, there’s more responsibil-
ity for that on the folks who run
the network. “There’s a little bit
of an obligation of, you ought to
have more integration skills than
you’ve had before,” he says -- and
adds that the differences also ex-
tend beyond network teams, to
procurement. He gives an automo-
tive example: “We all know how
to go and buy a car. Imagine the
electric car industry came along
and said by the way, [here’s a car]
but you have to buy your batteries
from somewhere else. That’s a bit
like what we’re doing here. We’re
going, ‘Yeah, we’ve got this great
new thing, it’s really cool, it’s an
electric car -- but oh yeah, we don’t
sell batteries. We don’t sell the en-
gine.’ People aren’t used to buying
cars that way, and they’re not used
to buying networks this way.”
His advice to workers and compa-
nies? Use the network technology
changes as an opportunity to learn,
and recognize that it’s going to take
quite a bit of work to get to where
you need to be. Pick a project and
give everyone involved a chance to
learn along the way, individually
and operationally.
“The companies that we’re engag-
ing with successfully are saying
to themselves, ‘There’s going to be
some effort required. There’s going
to be some pain along the way, we’re
going to have to do some thing dif-
ferently but we have to recognize
that with a skill set just as much as
we do with the technology,’” Bran-
don says. Individual employees
who are already good at what they
do may balk at having to start over
with a challenging skillset -- or they
can see it as a chance to differenti-
ate themselves. Telecom companies
can try to hire from cloud compa-
nies -- but Brandon notes that for
the size of the networks they run,
cloud companies don’t actually
have that many people running
them. “I think this is a world where
you re-train and of course you need
to get an initial seed skill-set in,
but there’s a lot of clever, bright
young engineers out there that will
pick this stuff up if they’ve got the
opportunity to. And I think that’s
really where these things go hand-
in-glove,” he says. “You need to de-
fine a project, say let’s have a go
at something, whether that’s open
RAN or whether that’s a project
in the edge but you need to say to
yourself, we’re going to run some
pilots, we’re going to do that and
part of that pilot is, let’s address the
skill-set as we go.
While both high-level and tech-
nical training or certification pro-
grams are increasingly available,
“I don’t think it will ever be as sim-
ple as, ‘Go on these three training
courses and then you’re fine,’” says
Brandon -- because the difference
is about operational processes as
much as specific technical knowl-
edge. “It’s not just, do I understand
now how to drive Linux? It’s, ‘What
does that mean for me as a product
manager?’ Which is quite different.
It’s, ‘What does this mean for me if
I’m provisioning engineer?’ Which
is different again from perhaps be-
ing a more senior manager,” he says.
“I think this subject … is almost
the elephant in the room, with
what’s happening in networking at
the moment,” Brandon concludes.
“There’s this massive opportunity
and this is probably the only bar-
rier between us having the oppor-
tunity and realizing it, so it’s really
important. And again … pick a
project, have a go, whatever it is. if
you’re going to keep waiting, you’re
never going to get the skill set.”
Need guaranteed leads? Thought leadership? Incremental content marketing opportunities?Sponsor an RCR Wireless News’ multi-platform, editorial program and receive the following benefits:
Editorial Webinar – sponsorship includes 250 guaranteed leads, participa-tion as sponsored guest and recognition as sponsor in all promotional materials. Sponsors will receive webinar registration and attendee list, responses to pre and post surveys and polling responses gathered during webinar.
Editorial Feature Report – in addition to recognition as sponsor in program promotion, sponsorship includes 250 guaranteed leads, distinct from webinar leads, one-page ad spread or advertorial in feature report, and responses to lead capture survey questions.
For information contact sales@rcrwireless.com
Fast facts about RCR Wireless News digital network
382,000 monthly page views
170,000 unique monthly visitors to websites
81,000+ opt in newsletter subscribers
220,526 monthly video minutes viewed on RCR Wireless News Youtube channel
45,000 leads generated annually
Industry leading demand generation programs and results
http://www.rcrwireless.com/category/free-reportsEach program is limited to three (3) sponsors
UPCOMING 2021
EDITORIAL PROGRAMS INCLUDE:
MAY 2021
The role of hyperscalers in industrial 5G – will they usurp carriers?
JUNE 2021
5G-connected venues: A shifting value proposition in a post-COVID world
Making Industry Smarter | Professional Sports Referee!!! RTLS is sports tracking – in football (soccer), hockey, cricket, tennis etc.
JULY 2021
Smarter buildings are safer buildings: Tenant safety as an amenity
Everything-as-a-service: Consumption models when the cloud is everywhere.
AUGUST 2021
Monetizing MEC: What’s the value in the edge?
Is cloud gaming the breakout consumer 5G use case?
SEPTEMBER 2021
Mid-band/c-band–trial, test, trajectory
The Open RAN report
OCTOBER 2021
Creative destruction: How network disaggregation changes everything
NOVEMBER 2021
Digital Factory Solutions | Industrial 5G The trouble with URLLC. Is 5G the new 3G? Why 5G sucks – and why we will have to wait for 6G to deliver on the promise of 5G?
What will the delay of Release 17 mean for the 5G future?
top related