Executive Insights with Deborah Kish, VP, Research and Workforce Development, FBA

As BEAD moves towards execution, the industry faces a labor crisis decades in the making.

In this Executive Insights Q&A, we explore how workforce shortages, training gaps, and aging crews are slowing fiber builds and putting long-term network quality at risk. Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), explains why planning for labor is just as, if not more, important than planning for infrastructure.

ISE: From your research vantage point, where do you see the biggest disconnect between how broadband deployment is planned and how it unfolds in the field?

Deborah Kish: I think the biggest disconnect between broadband plans and actual deployment starts with the workforce shortage. The planning stage of a network build is obviously necessary: analyzing markets, demand, architecture, mapping, permitting and more. However, what’s often overlooked is the trained technicians to build it. Fiber deployment is labor-intensive, and in our most recent Fiber Deployment Cost Study, we reported that 66% (aerial) to 73% (buried) of the cost being labor.  

Without proactively accounting for this talent, projects get delayed or worse, not done right, resulting in more time and money (and frustration) when things need to be “fixed” before service can be delivered. Precious time is lost between getting communities connected to high-speed, reliable fiber networks, and not just weeks or months. I have spoken with ISPs where it has taken upward of two years just getting the network working properly. It’s not a technology issue; it’s a workforce and training issue. Training often is the last thing to be thought of or planned for, and the first thing to get cut when times get tough.

FBA published a Workforce Development Guidebook a couple of years ago because we saw the need for workforce planning. Everyone was waiting “with BEADed breath” for the funds to roll out, so we provided guidance on how to plan, including a webinar.  We provided two basic models: 

1. Input-based: Calculate the number of new jobs needed based on ongoing and anticipated private and public funding (including matching funds), using employer data about job creation from historical investments as a baseline. 
2. Output-based: Divide the state into regions and calculate using regional estimates for new fiber miles generated by BEAD and industry data on fiber miles that can be laid per person, repeated for all regions in the state. Analysis should be done at the regional level to loop in region-specific ISPs and account for geographical differences that impact fiber pacing.

Based on the size of the project, employers need to evaluate their current workforce, whether contractor or ISP, and apply these same models and launch a strategy based on project timelines. Planning for the workforce is key to successful fiber deployments in both the public and private sectors.

ISE: Workforce challenges are often framed as a numbers problem. In your view, is workforce capacity or workforce readiness the bigger issue right now, and why?

Deborah Kish: It’s actually both in potentially equal proportions, which is troubling. This industry has been struggling for some time to gain interest from young people. The fact is that we have around 70% of our workforce in the 50+ age group, with the majority of those 60+ in the next five years. That doesn’t exactly put us in the pole position in either category of capacity or readiness. When they retire, the capacity problem will accelerate, and given that we don’t have interest from our youth, it will become a much bigger problem very quickly. We do not have enough people working in the 20–50-year-old range as it is right now.

Workforce readiness means that you have enough people, trained crews ready to go, continually cross-training, and a true pipeline of workers. Nimble enough that when poaching happens, someone falls temporarily ill, or someone takes a vacation, the job can continue. The issue with our industry now is that —in my view—workforce is currently treated as “piecemeal,” meaning network builders continue to find warm bodies for jobs as needed, rather than going “all in” on mentoring, recruitment, training, and marketing. We don’t do enough to advertise all the great things about this industry to gain interest.

There is also a generational dynamic, and technology is partially to blame. Technology has made it really easy to earn a very decent living at home. Interest in learning how to write code and develop apps that “make life easier” is the direction young people started to go years ago, and they make money while making a difference. We should have started back then teaching about “hey, look what you can do over the internet, but isn’t it cool how it is planned and built?” We never really did make THAT the cool factor.

Then there is a grouping of people who are encouraged to go to college because of the perception of better job opportunities and better pay. I do see some statistics now on how many young people are looking for technical training and certifications rather than a traditional four-year college degree, which is nice to see.

Honestly, I think we need to really consider doubling down on bringing training to Departments of Corrections, depending, of course, on a variety of important factors. Training “low security offense” incarcerated individuals could bring a lot of benefit to the industry and allow them an opportunity to become contributing members of society again. It has its challenges, but I do think we can work through them.

ISE: Looking across current deployments, what do you see as the most common reason projects slow down, and what concern stands out most as the industry scales?

Deborah Kish: I think it is a deadly combination of permitting, make-ready delays, and lack of workforce preparedness.

Permitting has been a long-time hurdle, depending on a variety of things, including local policies, utilities, and even litigation. It’s almost like being in a relay race, but the first hurdles are too high and, for the industry, it ultimately costs time and money. It needs to be streamlined, and some general things should be automated using AI, while more complex things remain managed by humans.

ISE: With BEAD driving significant deployment volume, what risks do you see to long-term network quality, and how can build teams maintain standards at that pace?

Deborah Kish: It all comes down to workforce in my view. The longer we wait to invest in training and creating and maintaining interest in the generations to come, the worse things will get. Today, we don’t tolerate “no service” from our broadband providers. Building a network is not a “once and done.” Fiber is lights-on 24/7/365, and when something happens like a storm takes down a pole and service goes out, AI isn’t coming to the rescue; a human is.

And it’s not just construction (locate, trenching, etc.). We need premises installers to go to the home and actually install the service. We’ll need troubleshooters, and all of them should be cross-trained to fill in where needed. These are real people, and the more of these we have, the better shape we will be. But we have to take training seriously in order to maintain a high standard of installation.

I mentioned AI, too. How about the Data Centers that are going to feed AI? We will need specially trained fiber splicers. What happens when we don’t have enough of them? This all takes planning.

ISE: As BEAD moves from planning into execution, what aspect of workforce planning do you think is most consistently underestimated?

Deborah Kish: Training and certification attached to that training. Non-deployment funding seems to mean different things to different people, and training or workforce seems to be a word everyone looks at and talks about with respect to non-deployment funds.

Also, a hang-up that I constantly keep hearing is that contractors are not hiring now because they don’t know where the jobs will be. That, to me, is not planning; therefore, execution suffers, the jobs suffer, because the lack of preparedness sends them in the direction of looking for warm bodies, training for the task at hand, and that’s that. That leads to bad habits being passed along, lack of knowledge and therefore lack of opportunity for the worker—AND the chance of poor workmanship leading to a customer who might take a couple of years to figure out the mistakes. It is a decades-long practice, and in my view, there’s no way to ensure you’re prepared or efficient in deployment.

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