International News: Singapore

02-September 2009

With around 139,000 people employed in infocomms in Singapore, there is constant demand across the operator, vendor, systems integrators and consultancy areas.

In the mobile sector, the market is shaped by three competing operators: StarHub, M1 and SingTel. This rivalry has created an innovative, fastmoving environment with the three operators eager to exploit consumer demand for 3G and mobile data services. In the fixed-line space, over the next six years, the government-funded Next Gen National Broadband Network (NBN) will deliver nationwide, ultra-high speed broadband
access to all physical addresses.

These factors contribute to the creation of a highly developed telecoms market with strong demand for skilled contract and permanent
employees.

There were 6,500 vacancies in 2008, with the majority in software development (1,900), followed by infrastructure support, sales & marketing,business process outsourcing and training.

One service that telecoms organisations could utilise to better effect is the deployment of highly skilled contractors. For many organisations there is still scope to increase their use of highly knowledgeable project staff who can improve knowledge-transfer, flexibility and delivery. However, as the NBN project demonstrates, Singapore is at the vanguard of telecoms technology.

Chris Baker: APAC regional director of RP International, a specialist telecoms recruiter