Plenty of folks have stepped forward this year to help shore up a shortage of fiber workers, but a new training program from access equipment vendor ATX Networks is targeting a different segment of the broadband market: cable.
The company this week launched the Field Personnel Replenishment Program, which is designed as an add on to existing electrical lineworker training programs. ATX’s course includes four to eight weeks of cable-specific instruction meant to produce graduates with a proficiency in both coax and fiber splicing, meter reading and bucket truck operation.
ATX said it has initially partnered with North Carolina’s Cape Fear Community College to offer the program. It is looking to team with additional educational institutions, aiming to roll the program out nationwide. An ATX representative told Fierce it is currently speaking with a handful of other community colleges.
According to the company, its decision to develop the program came in response to customer demand for skilled labor to supplement a shrinking workforce of experienced cable technicians. The need for more field technicians comes as cable moves through another transitional period, with many operators shifting to distributed access architecture and planning DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades to fend off advances from fiber competitors.
A quick glance at U.S. operator career pages reflects this trend. Charter Communications has more than 600 openings for roles spanning engineering and networking engineering, field operations, technical operations and field technicians. Meanwhile, Mediacom has 92 listing for positions in construction, installation and technical operations, while Comcast has 71 openings for tech and field operations.
“Our MSO customers tell us daily that the biggest obstacle in their path to keeping customers happy and competitors at bay over the next several years is access to a robust and highly-skilled workforce,” ATX SVP of Business Services Bob Murphy said in a statement. “ATX immediately recognized that in addition to supplying the cable community with the technology and equipment required to revitalize their networks, we also needed to help MSOs field a workforce capable of getting all this innovation installed and turned up without costly delays.”
Ultimately ATX said it’s hoping to place graduates with cable operators, third-party contractors or hire them itself.
"The current situation is that shortages exist across the industry and between our customers, the contractors we work with and our own resources, we are encountering hundreds of vacancies and, depending on the location, the odds are high that a new graduate will have a job waiting for them," the ATX representative told Fierce. "We're aiming to train as many technicians as possible to close this gap."
ATX isn’t the only vendor that’s stepped up to address the telecom labor shortage. Corning teamed up with AT&T earlier this year to launch a new fiber training program. Elsewhere, the Fiber Broadband Association and the Communications Workers of America union each made their own moves designed to train more fiber techs.