by TIP News
Since its launch in May 2022, the TIP Academy, in collaboration with Accenture, has been growing from strength to strength.
Designed to complement other academies, TIP Academy taps into the practical learnings from the TIP ecosystem to uplevel the skills of industry professionals entrusted with the responsibility to accelerate the deployment of open and disaggregated network solutions.
The first of many curricula is underway: TIP Academy Open RAN programme has now commercially launched eight learning programmes that contain 45 courses (almost 35 hours of learning). The courses take e-learners through the end-to-end fundamentals of financially evaluating, architecting, planning and designing, and testing and deploying Open RAN systems.
The first set of charter clients — Vodafone, Meta, Accenture, Orange and Deutsche Telekom — have now purchased courses and signed up their first wave of learners. New organisations are onboarding with TIP Academy as well, including a collaboration with USAID for Southeast Asia, universities in Europe, and professional consumers (“prosumers”). Students, professionals and job seekers now have access to enhance the knowledge and skills in this new wave of telecom innovation and receive TIP Academy certificates to add to their credentials.
Developed by Vodafone, Meta and Accenture, these TIP Academy courses have further been enhanced through the contributions of the TIP ecosystem including Rimedo Labs, Spirent, NEC, Rebaca, Intel, Analog Devices and IBM.
Furthermore, advanced courses for classroom-based teaching for solution architects, system integrators and installers are being developed by an Open RAN vendor consortium, including Mavenir and Red Hat, to address a big industry problem of how to accelerate the test and integration of TIP certified and blueprinted Open RAN systems for outdoor and indoor deployment scenarios.
TIP Academy has a clear mission to upskill the entire telecoms industry across all areas of open and disaggregated network solution domains. After conducting a TIP Academy survey across the TIP member base, the TIP Academy committee is proud to be considering its next set of curricula, which will kick off with the following topic:
- A TIP Academy Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) curriculum that will tap into the learnings from the global TIP community, which in the past three years has seen 100,000+ disaggregated cell site gateways (DCSG) commercially deployed and 45+ operator trials and deployments conducted worldwide.
TIP Academy looks forward to recruiting in organisations willing to contribute curriculum content for this new programme. Further details will be forthcoming.
Here are views from our ecosystem of partners and contributors on the outlook for TIP Academy:
Pedro Jeronimo, managing director, Cloud First Networks practice at Accenture, said: “Our vision for this initiative is to bring together the communications ecosystem around open and disaggregated network solutions. We are launching new courses and certifications beyond Open RAN to upskill professionals and students interested in the fast-moving 5G and global telecommunications workforce.”
John Baker, Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Business Development at Mavenir, said: “Open RAN vendor consortia are commonplace now and Open RAN systems are being tested, certified and commercially deploying but we need a path to scale through training up system installers, integrators and operator technical experts.”
Tom Koutsky, Senior Connectivity Policy Advisor at USAID, said: “Increased vendor diversity and economic growth opportunities from open and disaggregated networks can help close the digital divide in emerging markets. Through our International Open RAN Initiative, USAID is advancing these opportunities by upskilling current and future telecommunications professionals. We are excited to partner with TIP and their TIP Academy to help meet this important need in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.”
Vishal Mathur, Global Head of Engagement at Telecom Infra Project, said: “Through TIP Academy, we are charting a course for the telecoms industry to accelerate talent development in the field of Telecoms Networks. This is a fundamental lever for increasing the pace and confidence in deploying Open & Disaggregated Network Solutions.”