With the 5G roll out, is IT talent is likely to receive more opportunities?

"With 5G networks available in the market, the demand for IT services will increase by many folds. The role of the IT industry will further expand to sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, transport and logistics, healthcare and education to name a few."

After the recently concluded 5G spectrum auctions, Jio, Airtel and Vi, three significant telecom providers, are getting ready to introduce 5G services in India soon. 5G network, among other things is expected to accelerate digital transformation in the workplace. With the benefits that come with 5G technology, there are a lot of questions surrounding the 5G network.

According to a trend noticed by NLB Services, a staffing MNC is among one of the fastest-growing transformational workforce solution providers, 5G roll out expected to benefit and transform various sectors. Due to the ongoing developments in 5G there will be a surge in demand for skills across multiple aspects. Especially in the case of Cloud and Cybersecurity specialists who will be responsible for mitigating the challenges of the open networks. The world of Extended reality and metaverse adoption is also anticipated to grow on the back of high-speed networks and will need many more Unity and blockchain specialists to integrate the in-platform experience.

Globally 5G is considered to be an over USD 1 trillion opportunity and there are definite lessons on the talent front. In Europe alone, 5G has the potential to revise close to 20 million jobs either directly or owing to the use cases. US worked with 20+ independent organizations and online platforms to upskill and create 30,000+ deployable talent on 5G and worked with at least 5 state universities to have 5G-focused course-ware for fresh graduates. Similarly, 5G rollout in India is expected to deploy IT talent for smoother processing.

Nikhil Anand, Senior Vice President- Operations, NLB Services spoke to VoicenData and explained various aspects of the 5G technology and its affect on the IT industry in detail. Here are the excerpts from the interview:

V&D: Most of the technology adoption is seeing an ecosystem approach, where network security is a very important aspect. Do you feel this comes as one of the major challenges for the IT industry?

Nikhil Anand:Today, Network security has become very important not just for IT or Telecom but across industries because more and more systems and devices are getting integrated than ever. As a result, the focus is not only on network security but on the connected components, systems and end-point devices that operate in any network and are critical for enterprises or businesses today. With all the hardware and software systems, IT appliances and business applications along with end-point devices lead to a very complex and heterogenous environment for any organisation in terms of IT security. This brings new security challenges not just for networks or network infrastructure but the overall IT and network infrastructure in the organization. 

V&D: The spectrum auction will pave the way for 5G roll-outs in India. What are your views on the ample amount of spectrum available at hand for auction with just two major bidders?

Nikhil Anand:In my view, if we look at the Indian telecom industry over the past three decades or so, the telecom sector has had an organic consolidation that is usually common in any matured market. Clearly, any telecom player who wants to operate in a market like India requires to have the means and avenues to constantly upgrade infrastructure and sustain its business which is a capital-intensive affair. Moreover, they would need to innovate new business models and service offerings given the dynamic provisions of Web3.0 and therefore the role of talent becomes critical to help build differentiators.  

Also unique to 5G is the ability to set up private networks and the telecom department has already said that the big tech companies can set up their private 5G networks which can uniquely boost their enterprise business. So while we may be looking at limited telecom bidding for now, the scope is much more encompassing.  

V&D: With 5G services rollout on the anvil, what major benefits does a 5G network offer to the IT industry?

Nikhil Anand:With 5G networks available in the market, the demand for IT services will increase by many folds. The role of the IT industry will further expand to sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, transport and logistics, healthcare and education to name a few. It needs to be noted here that these sectors in the past have not been very profit-driven for the IT industry because the overall demand for IT services was not very huge or the scope was very limited. But that is likely to change with 5G networks as the IT industry will have to work closely in these sectors in order to develop and innovate new technology offerings in form of services and solutions built specifically around 5G networks which are largely data-driven. 

In other words, IT companies will have to come up with new use cases in different industries and segments, work closely with their enterprise customers and bring out unique solutions which could be customized as per demand or even can be a joint offering targeted at a specific segment or segments within a market or region. And all that certainly brings huge opportunities for the IT industry ahead. One has to keep in mind that 5G largely is enterprise-centric and so IT companies, telcos, as well as enterprises, will have to collaborate and work very closely than ever in order to gain or make the most of 5G's real potential. 

V&D: With captive private networks becoming a reality, both telcos and tech- cos will look to skill and upskill their workforce, the talent pool that telcos will target will surely overlap with the tech companies, in your view is it another battle both telcos and tech- cos must be prepared for?

Nikhil Anand:It would not be right to say that there's another battle between telcos and tech companies in the context of 5G and captive private networks. If we look back, in the past few decades, it was IT outsourcing that led to enormous growth for IT companies, where telcos, banks, insurance and financial services companies among other organizations were signing multi-year multi-million and billion IT outsourcing deals. For example in India, Airtel has outsourced IT to IBM which shows that both companies are not competing against each other but are trying to leverage their core abilities and talent. Today, we are actually in an era of collaboration. 

V&D: How in your view is the roll-out of 5G expected to provide more opportunities to IT talent when looked at in comparison to various other industries that might derive similar opportunities from 5G.

Nikhil Anand:According to a PwC study, the impact of 5G will add $13.2 trillionto global GDP by 2030 and it is expected to generate 22.3 million jobs in the 5G global value chain alone. Since IT has established itself as an enabler for businesses and organizations in all these years, obviously the demand for IT talent is likely to go up not just in various verticals.  However, when it comes to 5G, IT companies will have to focus more on training and researching their existing workers along with skilling and training. That's how the IT industry can provide more opportunities to IT talent, and try to reduce the supply-demand gap.

V&D: The rapid march-of new-age technologies has triggered a talent demand but at the same time with every new technology the supply-demand gap of skilled manpower is increasing. How in your view should the IT industry be dealing with this gap?

Nikhil Anand:In the face of a massive talent gap, organizations need to invest in building a community of active learners who can keep up with the dynamic business environment.Speed and quality have become two important components of the current recruitment ecosystem. Building a talent pipeline requires a lot of backend work dedicated to upskilling for more efficient teamwork and greater productivity. Upskilling and reskilling of tech talent will become fundamental for the future growth of organizations.