Digitally-led Knowledge Intensive Society

By: Akhil Gupta,Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises

Telecom operators should come forward to leverage their equipment and infrastructure for facilitating hands on training

Digital India, the flagship program of the Indian government is set to unfold massive opportunities for the youth. The program aims to transform India into a digitally-led knowledge intensive society ready to unleash exponential socioeconomic growth.   

A robust telecom infrastructure is the key to turn this vision into a reality. In the last two decades, the telecom sector has undergone a revolutionary transition to become the world’s second-largest telecommunication market with more than 1.2 billion subscribers. The sector contributes around 6.5 percent in the Indian GDP, which may well increase to 8.2 percent by 2020.

India is likely to witness evolution of new technologies and applications such as 5G, Smart City, Internet of Things, Machine to Machine Communication, Big Data, Cloud services, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality etc.

In order to extend these services to the far-flung areas of the country, the telecom service providers will have to strategically deploy viable digital business models and services, network upgrades and modernization, and improved IT systems. To make all this possible, the sector will require talent pool with innovative, creative and out of the box thinking with background of basic technical and business accreditations.

Great Expectations

Indian Academia need to ensure that the desired skill-based content (which already have been developed by TSSC) for the telecom sector form an active part of the existing curriculum so that the students are employable and job ready the moment they step out of the academic system. In terms of policy, there ought to be a push from the government for acceptance of the Skill India certification as a pre-requisite for jobs in the telecom sector. These measures will bring synergy into the system and will help fulfill the demand supply gap.

Significant opportunities exist for telcos to improve how they manage talent and build new capabilities.

Telecom service providers are ready to hire, nurture and retain the newly skilled talent that has been trained and certified by TSSC, based on the job parameters and as per requirement. Skilling certification should be incorporated to make hiring easy. The operators should also come forward to leverage their equipment and infrastructure for facilitating hands on training.  Learning new skills and new capabilities are key to the success of new employees.