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There is a lack of skilled fiber professionals in Europe. As an industry, how do we work hard to solve this problem? Keely Portway Discovery
CityFibre’s recruitment plan will include the identification and training of thousands of unemployed British residents
There is a lack of skilled fiber professionals in Europe. As an industry, how do we work hard to solve this problem? Keely Portway Discovery
Given the 2020 climate, Eurostat estimates that more than 15.6 million people were unemployed in Europe and the Eurozone in August, an increase of 251,000 people from July. This is not surprising. The outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent measures to fight the pandemic are the main reasons for the sharp increase in unemployment benefits across the EU. At the same time, however, a particular industry not only continued to recruit, but had to increase recruitment efforts to meet the ever-increasing demand for more bandwidth since the pandemic began: the telecommunications industry. This kind of recruitment activity is now being carried out throughout the supply chain. From research and academics to product development and manufacturing; from network design and construction to installation. For example, Indigo Telecom Group, an expert in the design, construction and support of infrastructure, is currently expanding its workforce to expand its capabilities in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany. Its chairman, Kevin Taylor, said: "We have seen significant growth in key areas of our business-fiber and wireless design/build/support and data center transformation. Our goal is to continue our acquisition. Strategically and recruit more talents to strengthen our position as a trusted engineering and service partner to provide services to customers who rely on Indigo to provide real and lasting value. Recruitment-driven installations, the British rural broadband provider Gigaclear, independent optical fiber Companies such as the provider CityFibre and the UK’s access network infrastructure owner Openreach are also looking to significantly increase their workforce through recruitment, training, and apprenticeship. Image source: Openreach Gigaclear announced that it will recruit 120 new full-time field engineers by the end of March. Help build network capacity. CityFibre revealed a three-year recruitment and training program to provide up to 10,000 jobs to upgrade the UK’s digital infrastructure to all-fiber optics. Nathan Randell, Director of Delivery, Gigaclear Rundle elaborated: “We are proud to be able to recruit outside when many other companies let employees take time off and lay off employees. As we continue to expand our network, this shows how important our work is. We will provide comprehensive training and we are looking for senior and junior positions from different backgrounds. CityFibre's recruitment plan will include identifying and training thousands of unemployed British residents and providing new job opportunities for qualified and experienced construction and telecommunications workers. The plan will target specific groups, including those who have left their jobs and those who are unemployed due to the pandemic. Steve Holliday, Chairman of CityFibre, said: “The program will penetrate into our society and include some of the people who need opportunities most. Ultimately, it will ensure that skilled labor is in place to complete the job, while providing skills upgrades and skills in more than 100 cities and towns. High-paying job. Human Resources Openreach Director of Human Resources Kevin Brady explained at a recent Virtual Connect UK event: “It takes people to build a network. In the past three years, we have been investing heavily to increase our workforce, and retraining and nurturing talents to build this. I am proud to say that we have recruited more than 6,500 people in the past two years to keep people away from the streets and train them. Training is essential. Although the industry’s massive recruitment is a good thing, it’s worth noting that there is still a considerable gap in skilled workers. Stephen Hough, the main account manager of French cable and component supplier Acome, said at the same event: "I have been talking with an operator about their upgrade plans, and he said that to some extent, these plans are used by a limited number of engineers. He has met many people who call themselves engineers who “trained” through YouTube and renamed them. As the pandemic continues to prevent travel, and the working-age population in Europe is expected to decrease by about 13.5 million or 4% by the end of the decade, people Worried that this gap will continue to widen. To try to solve this problem, the European Commission (EC) recently announced its European Skills Agenda, which sets out the goals for skills upgrading and skills retraining to be achieved in the next five years. Its 12 actions The plan focuses on employability skills, working with member states, companies and social partners to encourage lifelong learning, and release public and private skills investment. The purpose of the plan is to ensure the realization of training rights across the African continent. One goal is to increase STEM graduates and Cultivate entrepreneurship and horizontal skills. The European Commission for Girls Power stated that only one-fifth of young people in Europe graduated from STEM higher education, with less than 2 million STEM graduates each year. Growth can be achieved through the promotion of STEM approaches, especially among young women , Because the current number of women graduating in STEM fields in the EU is only half of that of men, although there are huge differences between different countries. To help solve this problem, the committee promises to increase the attractiveness of STEM research and careers and take targeted actions To attract girls and women, and to encourage the use of interdisciplinary and innovative teaching methods in schools, vocational education and training. As part of the European Education Zone exchanges, EC will also launch teacher activities to help solve the shortage of STEM teachers in EU countries The committee also pledged to promote science education in research and innovation actions, such as developing key capabilities and evaluation frameworks; cooperating with the European School Network to disseminate scientific education research results; and using social empowerment portals to bring schools from different European countries, especially It is the gathering of schools with open education experience. It will also cooperate with business professionals to promote the integrated framework and learning continuum alliance between secondary and higher education systems, education and business, and further promote open education and Based on research methods, competitions, and citizen science. Leading the way. From a business perspective, how to conduct training is another key factor. Acome's Hough said: "Fiber is a high-tech and fragile product. It is glass, as thin as a human hair, usually pulled out thousands of kilometers in length, then cut, placed on a reel, stuffed into an underground pipe, and so on. People who develop and understand these products should indeed lead the training. '
In Acome's case, it cooperated with the training company Novea to establish a training center tailored to the supplier's design and resources. "In France," he said, "this is seen as an evolutionary, forward mechanism. For example, if you think about the way to launch in France, there is a regulatory agency that creates a technology community, which is then used to enable the program ( At the same time allowing innovation). It introduced the structure of a large-scale national training program. Image source: Acome This is carried out with the support of the national training program following the French vocational education and training reform in 2018. The idea is to retrain the unemployed And rebuild the telecommunications workforce to support the country. Hoff explained that it seems to have completed its work and the organization is constantly evolving. Training now produces about 6,000 new technicians each year. He said: “Now, a well-trained Of technicians have passed about 400 households on average, so it is predicted that by around 2022, there will be approximately 27,000 new skilled technicians in the area. Back in the day, Ian Gordon Fudge, the owner of the training company Fiberdk, provided the trainer’s views. Fudge has been engaged in network training for more than 30 years, covering copper cables, fiber optics and networks. He has also written several books on fiber optic and copper cable installations. Books. Fudge’s point of view is concentrated in Denmark, where FTTH deployment first started in a few villages, using two multimode and one single-mode fibers: multimode for the Internet and singlemode for television. At that time, every household Each has a media converter, from the technical cabin to the manhole or the underground cable of the street cabinet, and blows the enhanced performance fiber unit (EPFU) fiber to the customer. "A lot has changed," Fudge said. "We currently have more than 30 ISPs, some of which are very large, some are medium, and some are small. It was not until a few years ago that power companies deployed FTTH, and in the past few years, this has not expanded much. About a year Earlier, this “big” company started deploying FTTH. Fudge said that the company started from scratch and trained about 120 people to install it. “This helps change the speed of everyone else,” Fudge said. “They are doing the best they can now. Deploy quickly. The “big” company announced that they will chase the last 1 million customers, so now, everyone is deploying at full speed! Fudge said that the most common deployment method in Denmark is Active Ethernet, which is a Circle technology houses, interconnected by high-speed switches and routers connected together, each technology house has up to 2,500 customers, and each house has its own optical fiber. More than half of the people also provide cable TV on a fiber. Under pressure, he said that more and more companies are turning to GPON. “There are discussions about upgrading to NGPON2 or XGS-PON. The market is under pressure due to the lack of trained optical fiber installers. This leads to improper installation and attempts Let well-trained technicians change companies. Due to government funding, more and more networks are becoming open, so end customers can choose their own content providers. Fudge went on to explain that all cables are underground, most of which are Air-blown micro-cables with 72, 96, 144, and 288 cores, and customer cables with 2-6 cores, usually smaller than 2 mm and blown from street cabinets. He said that the splitting ratio of PON devices is usually 1:32 Between 1:128.'FTTH training includes everything from the access point (POP) to the customer, blowing cables and fibers, installing ODF, and connecting street cabinets. For customers, this has a duration of 10 days, but Since not all customers build POPs, there may be a 5-day change from the fiber distribution center to the customer, including mid-span breakthroughs. Finally, some require 5 days of measurement, 1 day for OLTS 1 and 2 reference, and then 4 days OTDR measurement. The installation can be point-to-point, PON, or even a combination. After the installation is complete, connect it to the TV and the Internet Net to check its work. Over the years, Fudge has witnessed the type of training required for frontline installers. "Since the installation of the multi-mode device, there have been trainees from many countries," he said. "The trainees from many countries in the world have received training in Denmark. The main problems they face are safety and the duration of more than 25 years. High-quality device.
Nicolas Aubé, the founder and president of Celeste, played an important role in the broadband industry revolution. In 2001, Celeste did something new. It launched broadband Internet service providers for public and private companies. Provide optical fiber, including network, telephone and cloud services. Aubé said: “We focus on what the business needs-quintet services; Internet, VPN, fixed and/or mobile phones and rack enclosures. Unique high-bandwidth solutions on the market, such as fiber-optic Internet connections, have become popular and have Become the new standard.'Our emergence as a national competitor is a revolution in the French broadband market. French mid-sized companies can now quickly and easily access competitively priced high-bandwidth services. Celeste's fiber optic products are available throughout France 92 % Of enterprises using ISP services. Today, it only accounts for 1% of the overall digital market share, but it is expected to achieve double-digit year-on-year growth. As the preferred B2B provider, Celeste is speeding up with confidence and has now become The first choice for museums, breweries, firefighting units, hospitals, small businesses, etc. With more than 6,000 kilometers of underground fiber optic cable network, the crown jewel of the company is the Marilyn data center. High-energy team, low-energy commitment Celeste data center manager Sylvain Thueux said: "Reducing energy consumption is the core deliverable of Marilyn's data center. We invented a new method, the vertical structure, which allows nature to control the climate of the facility. The building sucks in air from outside. Our ecological high-density data center has lower energy consumption and is based on a global patent for vertical air cooling. The airflow from the ground up makes us the most energy-efficient data center in the world-as far as we know. Marilyn's products cover Internet access, MPLS interconnection and fiber optics, IP telephony or hosting from this "green" data center. In terms of functionality, this is all about moving data safely at the speed of light while greatly reducing power costs. Compared with the traditional data center, the total power consumption is estimated to increase by nearly 35%, saving about 6GWh every year. In order to find an alternative to fiber optic cables, Celeste looked for suppliers willing to meet its own standards. Celeste has specific goals for the smoothness, roundness and diameter of the fiber optic cable. Tensile strength and compression resistance are important for field reliability and cable life. Celeste's partnership with OFS in fiber optic solutions is in line with its strategy to support a growing number of businesses across France seeking high-speed, secure, and powerful broadband. OFS was brought into discussion, which led to months of trials. This included visits to OFS factories in Augsburg, Germany and Tangier, Morocco. The team observed technical capabilities and discussed modifications to meet their needs. Three test cables were developed as proof of concept. This cooperation signed a contract for OFS to supply 72-core optical cables in 2019, including customized MiDia Micro GX optical cables; delivered ahead of schedule and met all expectations. There are more and more orders for 6F, 144F and 288F. The current discussion includes OCS/FBS solutions for last-mile connections. Christophe Raffegeau, Purchasing Manager at Celeste, said: “We want to source from fiber technology leaders with similar strategies. Dialogue, interaction, and mutual motivation make this effort a win-win. The expertise and technical capabilities of both of us are important. OFS area Sales Manager Morad Fatih said: “Celeste looked for a flexible miniature cable that can withstand the tension during installation. Together, we have achieved outstanding results for fiber optic solutions in France, benefiting their customers. The value proposition of OFS miniature loose tube cables MiDia's OFS product portfolio of miniature cables is specifically designed for excellent air-blowing installation performance. They help reduce deployment costs while increasing capacity and fiber density in a limited space. In addition, cables allow providers to deploy fiber only when needed. This helps postpone initial investment costs while providing the flexibility needed for future technology upgrades. The MiDia Micro GX loose tube cable used by Celeste is customized to its specific needs. It offers a compact and lightweight design that helps ensure savings in capital expenditure and time, while maintaining easy installation. "Being the first choice for commercial and government networks, phone and cloud services to win in the market requires attention and attention to details," Aubé said. 'Our B2B clients in the French public and private sectors value our strengths in technology, service and sustainability. Compared to the two large telecommunications companies that dominate in France, our focus on B2B is all about unique challenges and opportunities. We are committed to building partnerships with customers and suppliers. For example, the strategic relationship with OFS in fiber optic solutions is critical to our performance and commitment to customers. The fiber optic network of the Paris Fire Brigade asked Aubé: "How does Celeste help the Paris Fire Brigade (BSPP) speed up response time and information to make decisions? Why not install fiber optic cables in all buildings at once, ranging from 2Mb/s to 100Mb/s? Thanks to mutual trust and commitment, this capability is now in place. When a company exists to protect life itself, the high performance of optical fiber plays a more critical role. For this reason, we are proud of our relationship with BSPP , To provide quick response to any problems or outages. Networking 82 facilities, BSPP fiber optic network replaced the old copper wire-based system. BSPP’s IT architecture developer Chief Warrant Officer Yann Pascal said: “Celeste brings our fiber optic network Speed, reliability and new features. Now, BSPP can more effectively meet a wide range of emergency needs. Commander and CTO Fabien Bossus agreed: “Celeste is an extension of our support team, which is centered on emergency response in the Paris region. We measure it by response time and the quality of life of supporting citizens. Celeste serves us around the clock, Even some minor problems.
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