How to become a 5G RAN Engineer
Own the radio — scheduling, beamforming, mobility and the procedures that decide whether a call survives.
Who takes this route
Engineers moving into the radio access network, often from a 4G RF or optimisation background.
The route
2 courses, in this order — 14 modules, about 6.7 hours of video, hands-on labs throughout, and a graded exam at the end of each.
Place 5G in the real world and draw the whole system from memory — architecture, SBA, radio, and the power-on-to-first-packet journey. No prior telecom knowledge assumed.
7 modules~3.3h videoCertificate exam → TELCOMA 5G Foundation (week 4)Decode the NR air interface, run a handover in your head, and dimension a real 5G RAN — from the resource grid and massive MIMO to CU/DU/RU splits, Open RAN, and KPIs.
7 modules~3.4h videoCertificate exam → TELCOMA 5G RAN Specialist (week 8)Before this: 5G Foundation, or equivalent working knowledge of 5G architecture
What you can do at the end
Read an RRC or NGAP trace and say why a handover failed; explain a CU/DU split and its fronthaul budget; reason about beam management and QoS the way a scheduler does.
What you earn
2 verifiable TELCOMA certificates — one for each course, issued only after you pass its graded exam. Each carries a number and a QR code to a public verification page an employer can open without an account.
- TELCOMA 5G Foundation
- TELCOMA 5G RAN Specialist
Where this goes next
Once the route above is behind you, AI-RAN & the AI-Native Network is the natural next step — aI inside the radio itself — the 3GPP hooks that went normative, RIC-hosted apps running on live networks, the shared-compute argument, and honest energy numbers with their denominators. Three strands, one honesty ladder.
Start where the route starts
The first lesson of 5G Foundation plays with no account and no card. The whole first module is free once you sign in.
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