As India Gets Ready For 5G, Govt Ties Up With Sterlite To Train Tier 3 Entrepreneurs In Network Maintenance

Networking solutions company Sterlite Technologies (STL) has decided to focus on starting with training and skill development in Tier 3 and beyond areas. The company will provide “highly-skilled” fibre specialists in association with the Indian government’s common services centres (CSC) to skill village level entrepreneurs (VLE) in maintenance and operations of optical fibre networks.

Looking at the Indian telecom sectors push for optical fibre, skilled workforce that can manage end-to-end optical fibre network is the need of the hour, Said STL’s CHRO Anjali Byce.

Under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the two parties, STL will conduct certified training programmes for entrepreneurs through its training arm STL Academy. The training programme will be conducted in over 100K VLEs across 100K gram panchayats form 40 cities for in the next six months, across the country.

The CSC will provide employment and self employment opportunities to these VLEs post the STL training.

STL will be flagging off two pilot programmes for training, with the first one launching this month, in select blocks in Uttar Pradesh. The key points of the programme include building skills such as optical fibre cable joining and maintenance across underground and aerial lines, optical network hardware maintenance, Wi-Fi access point maintenance. Further, it also includes field work such as site visits and workshops at block level on fibre optics and wireless network maintenance.

The Optic Fiber Network In India

In a step to push for digital India, the government has been laying optical fibre network throughout the country. Under the BharatNet project a total of over 370K Km as of optical fibre cable (OFC) pipes have been laid in over 138K gram panchayats as of October 11, 2019.

Industry experts believe that Indian has the potential to become the third largest consumer of 5G services by 2025. However, the country can only account for 5% of the global market share due to poor infrastructure, the report states.

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