Viewpoints

By: Deborah Kish, Vice President of Workforce Development and Research, Fiber Broadband Association

Closing the telecommunication workforce gap will not happen overnight, especially considering the age of the current workforce.

“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way,” —Greatest Love of All, Whitney Houston

Once upon a time, vocational education in high school was an honorable path to learn a craft that led to a full-time job, providing knowledge and experience in fields such as automotive repair, carpentry, construction, electrical, heating and air conditioning, welding, and more. Shop classes were where you learned to build and fix things before computers and the internet made hands-on work uncool and kids were being told that you needed to learn how to code and get a four-year college degree.

Splicing fiber is a hands-on skill, but one not widely taught in today’s schools and certainly not prevalent when compared to the established shop classes that are or used to be built into the core of most high schools. While the pendulum has swung back a bit from an all-code world with maker labs and robotics clubs encouraging school-age children to blend abstract coding skills with hands-on craftwork to actually make and build things, there is still plenty of work to be done before there’s a better balance between coding and reinvestment in classroom hands-on skills.

Compounding matters for the telecommunications industry and fiber in particular is the relative lack of apprenticeship-style training that occurs in hands-on trades, unlike established paths through union membership built and tested over centuries of practice and tradition. Fiber is a child with less than 40 years of practice compared to plumbing, pipefitting, electrical, welding, and other labor-intensive, high-skill jobs.

The telecommunications industry has not done a very good job of attracting new people to get into the space or become fiber optic technicians, so there are not a lot of candidates in the pipeline to train for the estimated 205,000 people who will be needed over the next five years, filling new and existing positions as the current workforce turns over through retirement and career advancement. Over 60 percent of the current workforce is on a retirement path, which could lead to shortages in terms of field technicians and, perhaps more importantly, experienced instructors to educate new entrants into the field. Only 12 percent of the industry’s fiber optic technicians are between the ages of 20 and 30.

The Fiber Broadband Association has already established its own fiber workforce development program, the Optical Telecom Installer Certification (OpTIC Path™) program, running it in partnership with community colleges, learning institutions, veterans’ programs, and service providers, along with Job Corps. We’re currently engaged with 40 states on rolling out the program in partnership with 44 service providers and 70 colleges or other learning institutions, putting us on a path to have OpTIC Path available in all 56 states and territories of the United States.

Getting OpTIC Path into the field and offered by trade schools and community colleges is the first and most immediate step the Fiber Broadband Association has taken over the past two years to increase the number of fiber optic technicians, but we plan to broaden and extend the pipeline of candidates in 2024, including efforts to expand our reach to veterans training efforts and enlightening the future workforce currently in the high school classroom on the value of a fiber-optic technician job.

The average annual pay of a fiber optic technician in the U.S. in May 2023 was around $60,000, according to ZipRecruiter, with annual salaries reaching nearly $200,000, providing a good-paying job with long-term stability and without the need for four years of college. Further, an entry-level fiber technician can choose to specialize between in-home installation and outdoor splicing and will most likely have an upward migration path to other better-paying positions within a construction firm or service provider, including field service management and marketing.

Engagement with high school students is necessary for numerous reasons. As upcoming generations re-engage with hands-on skills and trades through STEM, STEAM, and maker efforts, this is the right time to plant the seed that a good-paying career in the telecommunications industry is available without having to go to a college or obtain a computer science or engineering degree. Graduating high school students can go into the workforce without incurring four years of student loans and no promise of a job on the other side of graduation. Some graduating students aren’t interested in a long-term college commitment but prefer to go more directly into the workforce.

A few high school students have already taken OpTIC Path with more classes being spun up this year. Northeast Wisconsin Technical College had two high school students in their first graduating class. High school Slo-Isle TECH in Washington state will be starting its first OpTIC Path course in the spring, with Whidbey Telecom as an ISP partner. Later this year, Morrison Tech in Illinois will offer OpTIC Path with Jo-Carroll Energy’s assistance.

Mississippi is working to make OpTIC Path available throughout the entire state education system in K-12 schools through the state college system this year, with the first classes anticipated to start in the second half of 2024. In combination with other electives, Mississippi may be among the first states providing a clear path for “field-ready” technicians who can go more directly into open jobs with minimal additional training, saving employers money and enabling employees to make more money sooner.

Making hands-on fiber optic technician training available within high-school curriculum akin to other trades is only part of the solution to priming the workforce pipeline. Fiber is the “silent service” of utilities compared to the established trio of plumbing, electricity, and air conditioning. When the internet goes out, it’s usually lumped in with “the Wi-Fi is down,” without an exact cause of a router issue, a downed pole, or a fiber break delivered by a hungry squirrel or a misguided backhoe.

The industry will have to broaden its awareness efforts beyond simply making the classes available. Students will need to know a bit more about the nuts and bolts – or glass and splices — of the way the internet is delivered to their homes and schools, rather than the taken-for-granted service that works until it doesn’t. At Fiber Connect 2023, the FBA introduced “Broadband Basics: Your Future in Fiber!,” an OpTIC Path mini course to broaden awareness about broadband concepts and career opportunities. The free 15-minute online mini course, created by Dura-Line Academy, is designed to help recruit potential technicians to the fiber broadband industry. Available 24/7, participants will earn a digital badge after completing the session.

The fiber industry will also have to work through other channels to raise awareness of career opportunities in the high school setting. State Broadband Offices and State Workforce Development Offices will need to begin career-building awareness efforts at high schools and colleges as a part of their broadband workforce development efforts.

Activities may include “show and tell” sessions in middle and high schools on broadband-related careers, bringing recent hires and training graduates to participate and share first-hand experience. The presentations could stress the importance of broadband jobs and the broader impact it has on digital equity, telehealth, education, and state economic growth. Simpler ideas may be providing exposure (i.e. a table) at the school’s career day activities or participating in larger career showcase events taking place at the regional and state levels as appropriate. Use of AR/VR could also be an effective way to bring awareness to school-aged individuals as vendors like Transfr build out fiber construction related modules into headsets, giving students the opportunity to safely test their skills at restoring fiber service through splicing activities or operating horizontal directional drilling machines to pull conduit through a city street.

In addition, high school students could be offered work experience through an internship or pre-apprenticeship opportunities to acquire direct insight into the industry, build relationships with local employers, and gain a valuable opportunity for developing workplace skills. States may wish to explore the inclusion of industry apprenticeships or placements in telecommunications-related two-year associate degrees. Offering high school class credits for vocational training completed at local community college may also incentivize students to participate.

Most states are combining multiple activities as a part of their BEAD workforce development plans. For example, Ohio will increase broadband industry career awareness by exposing middle school and high school students to the industry through curriculum and internships. Funding for such efforts can be found through several federal programs, including BEAD and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), which provides states with recurring funding for these types of initiatives.

Closing the telecommunication workforce gap will not happen overnight, especially considering the age of the current workforce. It requires reaching beyond the existing pool of candidates and building a sustainable pipeline within our K-12 schools that will provide new workers for the years to come.

Deborah Kish is Vice President of Research and Workforce Development for the Fiber Broadband Association. In her role, she is leading research initiatives as well as serving as team lead in building the Optical Telecom Installer Certification Path (OpTIC Path™) program, the association’s fiber optic technician certification program. Prior to joining the Fiber Broadband Association’s team, she spent over 20 years as an analyst at Gartner covering broadband, telecom switching, signaling, and security topics advising thousands of service provider and vendor clients about product and service strategy.