Four Questions For: Fiber Broadband Association President & CEO Gary Bolton
It’s a busy time of year for Gary Bolton. The Fiber Broadband Association President & CEO is gearing up for the trade group’s annual Fiber Connect conference, June 1-4 in Nashville, where he expects “6,000 of our closest friends” to attend. He’s also dealing with a frustrating 90-day BEAD delay and a proposal in Congress to streamline and accelerate the program. We caught up with Bolton just before he embarked on a multi-week domestic and international road trip.
According to a nationwide study by Continuum Capital, the massive funding being infused into broadband networks by the U.S. and state governments will create an “extraordinary” amount of engineering and construction activity, disrupting the fiber deployment labor market. What is FBA doing to help the industry recruit more construction workers to avoid bottlenecks and construction delays?
Three or four years ago we realized the pace of labor was not going to keep up with the pace of fiber investment and construction. So, we created our OpTIC Path technician training program and ramped it up nationwide to every state and territory, using community colleges, private training institutes and veteran programs. We also work with WIA and PCCA. All these programs fit under TIRAP [Telecommunications Industry Registered Apprenticeship Program] and are Department of Labor-approved. Continue Reading
As part of the NTIA BEAD program, there are deployment funds and non-deployment funds, the latter of which includes workforce development. And the states were a little reluctant to set up training prior to being able to get to deployment, because they didn’t want to train people in their state and not have their programs ready to go and have them go off to other states. Which is a little frustrating for us, because we need 78,000 fiber optic technicians to be trained. Now, the other interesting part of this is about 90 percent of the people we train are military veterans.
Rep. Brett Guthrie, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has said about the BEAD program: “Three years of effort and not one inch of fiber has been built.” What impact do you expect from the Trump administration’s 90-day delay of the program and from NTIA efforts to streamline it? And any concerns about how the funds will ultimately be allocated?
The Energy and Commerce Committee put forth the SPEED for BEAD Act to streamline and accelerate the program. But we’re a little concerned about the 90-day delay. And the new NTIA Administrator [Arielle Roth] has not yet received the full Senate vote on her confirmation, and we are looking forward to getting the new, revised rules in place. We’d like to see them grandfather, to some extent, the final proposals that are already approved, so we can get shovels in the ground. A lot of our member companies in Louisiana, for example, were going up on the Hill, letting Congress know that their construction guys are washing trucks rather than deploying fiber because they were waiting on approval and that’s under the control of the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick. In the long run, it’d be great to get things streamlined. But in the short term, we are going to miss half a year, and we’re at risk of missing the builds cycle. A lot of the northern states cannot build during the winter, and that’s a high concern for us.
Speaking of Lutnick, it’s been reported that he intends to end the fiber preference in favor of a tech-neutral BEAD funding policy such as satellite technology.
There are 56 state and territory broadband offices whose directors and their staff understand every single unserved and underserved location in their state. They understand the topology for the deployment, they know their budget, and the families that they’re trying to connect. And so we would highly advocate for NTIA and Commerce to allow the states to use the right tools to connect the people in their state. Fiber is building the critical infrastructure for the future but some of the western states don’t have enough budget to deploy fiber everywhere, so they need to look at leveraging fixed wireless and Low Earth Orbit satellites, which today can only serve one living unit per square mile. We want to make sure there’s not a top-down edict.
There are multiple technologies currently competing to connect more Americans. What advantages does fiber have over the others?
It’s a noise-free environment that provides limitless capacity and extremely low latency and is ushering in the future. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that scientists were able to provide encrypted quantum networking communications for 158 miles over a traditional fiber network without using cryogenic cooling – a huge breakthrough. Only fiber can deliver quantum networking. Further, AI data centers require massive amounts of fiber, energy and water and AI applications are already a huge part of the telecom network. As we move towards having AI fiber homes, you’ll be able to leverage AI applications in your residence. We are near an inflection point once you put in fiber infrastructure. As we build out the nation with government subsidies to connect the unserved and underserved, fiber can enable putting up more cell towers and improve mobile wireless coverage. Wall Street says the first provider with fiber wins the broadband business and the mobile wireless business. We’re excited about our relationship with the Wireless Infrastructure Association and to get fiber to every cell tower and provide better mobile coverage.
By Paul Heine, Inside Towers Contributing Analyst
Paul Heine has covered radio/audio, media and marketing since 1985. He has held senior editorial management positions at Inside Radio, Radio & Records, Billboard Radio Monitor and the Friday Morning Quarterback (FMQB). Heine has also reported and analyzed media news and trends for Adweek, Mediaweek, Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter; appeared on “Today” and Fox News; and has been quoted in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and other publications. He began his career in on-air and programming positions at radio stations in Buffalo and Rochester, NY.
