What do I need to switch to Telecom

Hi everyone,
I completed my university degree last December in Computer Science. I've secured an interview with a Telecommunications company (Mobile phone service prodvider) for Graduate Telecom Engineer Trainee.

Honestly speaking, I didn't do much in Telecom in uni, except for stuff like FDM, TDM, etc. My question is what knowledge do I need to prepare for this Interview? I'm already a CCNA and have good knowledge in TCP/IP networks.

Is telecom so much different from normal networking. I guess I must get facts right on things like GSM, EGDE, GPRS, Base Stations, etc, but is that enough??

Cheers,
dula

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Comments

Paul Boz

It depends on what you want to do. Telecom is a huge industry and it's impossible to do "everything" but if there's something you enjoy particularly more than other things try for that. I enjoy transport so I try to stick to that. Phone systems and networks are all digital now anyway, so that's where the $$$'s at.

dula

This particulary company deals only with mobile phone services (GSM) so I guess I have to concentrate more on this.

Anyway thanks

michael_knight

I would brush up on whatever they are hiring you for, if you're going to be pulling cables, brush up on the different types of cables, if it's telephone switching then do that.

Paul Boz

dula wrote:

This particulary company deals only with mobile phone services (GSM) so I guess I have to concentrate more on this.

Anyway thanks

Are you going to be doing field work, like troubleshooting cell tower equipment and central office transport, or are you going to be behind a desk doing networking?

Typically cellphone companies don't own the transport between towers, and just buy however many T1's (usually four) from the local loop.

kafifi13

I work for a Telecom provider. I think the CCNA is good enough. YOu may need to touch up on some voice services and terminology but if they deal with data products you should be all set. I worked for a telecom company for 4 years and learned more about telecom studing for my CCNA than in those four years. YOu'll be fine.

dula

Paul Boz wrote:

dula wrote:

Are you going to be doing field work, like troubleshooting cell tower equipment and central office transport, or are you going to be behind a desk doing networking?

I beleive this is most probably what I'm going to do, field work, in addition to helping with installing the cell towers. They have coverage all over the country, so I beleive it's going to involve a lot o travelling around the country dealing with base stations

dula

kafifi13 wrote:

YOu may need to touch up on some voice services and terminology but if they deal with data products you should be all set.

They deal mainly with voice services, though they provide data services as well, like Mobile Internet through GSM modems. I would like to touch up on voice services, any free good reference materials?

kafifi13

Here is a pretty good site:

http://www.bandwidth.com/wiki/article/Main_Page

I'm not that familiar with Wireless technology because we deal more with LAN's and WAN's. Let me know if you have questions.

dula

kafifi13 wrote:

Here is a pretty good site:

http://www.bandwidth.com/wiki/article/Main_Page

I'm not that familiar with Wireless technology because we deal more with LAN's and WAN's. Let me know if you have questions.

Many thanks, and no problem

mgeorge

One of the more plentful fields in cisco is the VoIP route. CCNA is a stepping stone to CCVP or
even CCIE Voice. That is if in fact your wanting to go into telecommunications. CCNA is basic
network communications. Such as routing with EIGRP, OSPF, RIP and switching with L2 and L3
switches. For CCVP you have to basically know 802.1Q inside out as the VoIP Phones utilize
802.1q trunking to attach to their vlan and leave the workstation in the native vlan (no vlan id)

Most switches used any more in the business field are 3550's up (Power over ethernet) for voip
typically businesses will place PoE switches on a battery backup to ensure telephones stay up
after power failure. So you will not only want to know about routing equipment, but batty backup
as well. APC is the prime choice of battery backups. So play with their web management interface

Be fimular with all the common diagnosis such as ping, tracert, iproute, etc...

Cucumber

if the job position is related to BaseStations, I think you would need to know some RF concepts and how GSM works at the rf layer like tdma, traffic channels (tch) , control channels (bcch,fcch,etc)

As a plus, some very basic knowledge of SS7 networks could also help. I worked on a CDMA company and SS7 was the core of the network, I think it is also for GSM.

Anyway, if they are looking for a jr engineer without previous experience, I think the interview will be focused on other things rather than in your GSM knowledge.