Bangalore: Though the global economic turmoil has dealt a nasty blow to the hiring outlook of the country in general, the telecom sector, with over a dozen fresh telecom players waiting to enter the market, will hire over one lakh people for multiple job functions, say industry sources.

A Times of India report said that Swan Telecom, Datacom (of Videocon Group), S-Tel, Loop Telecom (of Essar Group) and Unitech, Shyam Telecom (of Sisteme Russia) were some of the new entrants. Existing players like Airtel, Aircel, Idea Cellular are aggressively expanding into newer circle. CDMA players like Tata and Reliance have been awarded GSM licenses.

Kris Lakshmikanth, MD of Head Hunters, says, "When every other sector is keeping a low-profile in terms of people expansion, telecom is still active. A lot of activity is expected once 2G and 3G players enter the market. Completing the eco-system will be a large number of telecom/datacom and network technology providers."

"Companies like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Juniper are hiring in large numbers in the product development, testing, network, routing protocol, call processing, administration and operation and management areas", says Ajay Dutt, VP, Newera India Consutancy.

A recent Gartner study had found that while North America has been the largest telecommunications market, Asia Pacific will surpass that region in telecom revenue in 2008. North American telecom revenue is forecast to total $511.6 billion in 2008, a 4.5 percent increase from 2007. The Asia Pacific market is projected to reach $513.1 billion in 2008, up eight percent from 2007.