With India giving the go-ahead to much-awaited 5G trials, 5G job postings have doubled over the last quarter, according to GlobalData.

Gagandeep Kaur, Contributing Editor

June 2, 2021

2 Min Read
5G hiring picks up in India

With the Indian government finally giving the go-ahead to much-awaited 5G trials, 5G job postings have doubled between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, according to GlobalData, a data and analytics firm.

"Job postings have doubled between Q4 2020 and Q1 2020, indicating an increase in the demand for expertise in the 5G domain. Popular roles include engineers, specializing in networks, IP networking, software, firmware and automation," says Ajay Thalluri, business fundamentals analyst, GlobalData, in a press note.

Ericsson, Cisco, Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are key hirers in India. Of the jobs posted by Ericsson since January, 20% are based out of India, while Cisco posted 30% 5G jobs in India. Meanwhile, Dell is hiring for its 5G research and development team in Bengaluru in South India.

Figure 1: Job spree: India's telcos are on a hiring kick to prepare for 5G. (Source: Raj Rana on Unsplash) Job spree: India's telcos are on a hiring kick to prepare for 5G.
(Source: Raj Rana on Unsplash)

"Cisco's 5G related hiring is dominated by engineers for cloud core and packet core teams to enable virtualized cloud services. Job postings are also for 5G mobile core projects to translate customer business needs into product technical requirements and use cases," says the GlobalData note.

Going viral

TeamLease, a staffing company, says in a report that 5G will drive contractual hiring over the next two years in the telecom sector.

The talent requirement by the industry is likely to see 18% growth in 2021. Technicians, installation engineers, civil engineers and project managers are some job roles that are going to be in demand, according to the TeamLease report.

Want to know more about 5G? Check out our dedicated 5G content channel here on Light Reading.

Hiring in the telecom industry surged last year as data usage increased across the country after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with companies forced to adopt remote work to maintain business continuity. This was a positive development for the industry as consolidation led to rampant job losses in 2018-19.

While the government has approved 5G trials, the 5G spectrum auction is likely to be postponed to early 2022, making 5G unlikely to launch before the second half of next year. Essentially, this means that while companies have initiated 5G hiring in India, it is likely to pick up in the coming year.

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— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Gagandeep Kaur

Contributing Editor

With more than a decade of experience, Gagandeep Kaur Sodhi has worked for the most prominent Indian communications industry publications including Dataquest, Business Standard, The Times of India, and Voice&Data, as well as for Light Reading. Delhi-based Kaur, who has knowledge of and covers a broad range of telecom industry developments, regularly interacts with the senior management of companies in India's telecom sector and has been directly responsible for delegate and speaker acquisition for prominent events such as Mobile Broadband Summit, 4G World India, and Next Generation Packet Transport Network.

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