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

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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

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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,”

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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

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What will the delay of Release 17 mean for the 5G future?