Fiber Frontiers: Navigating Certification Pathways

The telecommunications industry faces a critical shortage of skilled fiber technicians just as the federal government's Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program injects $48.5 billion to connect 10.7 million homes currently without internet access.

• Sean Kelly from Light Brigade explains how the skills gap developed as educational systems steered students away from technical trades
• Industry needs 205,000-800,000 new fiber technicians over the next five years while losing experienced technicians to retirement
• Light Brigade launches comprehensive certification programs: CFOE, CBFOT, CBFOS, and CBFOP to address the growing demand
• Certification programs balance theoretical knowledge with hands-on training based on a strict 7:1 student-instructor ratio
• Fiber skills remain transferable between industries from telecom to data centers, 5G deployment, and edge computing
• New digital credentials through Credly provide tamper-proof verification of credentials that can be shared on resumes and social media
• Training options include nationwide open classes or custom on-site training for companies

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Let's Talk Cabling
• 2:16 Growing Demand for Fiber Technicians
• 5:11 Broadband Initiative Impact on Industry
• 9:45 Technician Shortage and Workforce Challenges
• 14:29 Bringing Internet to Unconnected Communities
• 24:21 Light Brigade Certification Program Overview
• 31:50 Digital Credentials and Career Benefits
• 36:03 Training Options and Student Experience
• 44:47 Industry Credentials and Training Comparisons
• 48:33 Next Steps for Interested Technicians

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Wiremonkeys, welcome to another episode of let's Talk Cabling. We are talking fiber certifications.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Welcome to let's Talk Cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low-voltage industry connects, hosted by Chuck Bowser, rcdd. We're here to empower installers, designers and industry pros with the tips, stories and best practices you need to stay ahead. From copper to fiber, standards to innovation, this is the show that keeps you.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by apprentices, installers, technicians, project managers, estimators, even customers. We're connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind giving us a five-star rating? That helps us reach more people so we can educate, encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry. Wednesday nights, 6 pm, eastern Standard Time. What are you doing? You know I do a live stream on TikTok, instagram, facebook, LinkedIn where you get to ask your favorite RCDD and you know that's me, don't even try to pretend like I'm not your favorite RCDD questions on installation, certification, design, project management, estimation. I even do career path questions, but I can hear you now, chuck, I'm driving my truck at Wednesday nights at 6 pm. I don't want to get into a crash. Okay, I record them and you can watch them at your convenience. Also, while this show is free and will always remain free, if you find value in this content, would you click on that QR code right there, you can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, and I'm also even selling now T-shirts on Amazon. So if you want a let's Talk Cabling T-shirt, look it up, let's Talk Cabling on Amazon. You'll find it.

Speaker 1: 2:04

So recently well, not necessarily recently, but within the last couple of years the federal government started doing a broadband initiative, and what that does is taking fiber to the rural networks of our country, and what that did was it increased the demand for people who are skilled fiber technicians. What that also means is now companies are also struggling to find those qualified technicians. What that also means is now companies are also struggling to find those qualified technicians, and that's where certification and training comes in, because a lot of times we start out in this industry, you get put on copper, very few people go straight to fiber, and so it's always been a lag to get those fiber certification skills. Now, everybody already knows all the famous ones, like the Bixi fiber class and and the FOA Fiber Class, but you know what A reputable name in fiber optic training has just come out with some certification that you might want to be interested to talk about. So joining us today is Sean Kelly from Light Brigade, an industry leader. If you've ever been to a Bixie conference, I think he speaks at every single one and I always try to go to him because he's a wealth of knowledge. He has forgotten more about fiber than I know about fiber. So we're going to talk about Light Brigade and we're going to talk about their new certifications that are coming out.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Mr Sean, welcome back to the show. How are you doing, my friend? Doing well, chuck. Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here. It's always a pleasure to have you on, my friend. So give us a quick 30-second intro. Who is Sean Kelly? Who is Light Brigade?

Speaker 3: 3:34

And why should we listen to you guys? Okay, well, I'm Sean Kelly, rcdd, cfhp. I'm a near 30-year fiber optic veteran in the industry through engineering and product management and marketing roles different things like that. I currently serve as technical director and head of marketing at Light Brigade. So my team we have responsibility for creating all the content, keeping it modern and updated, and then, obviously, on the marketing side, with my marketing team, they are getting the word out. So, yeah, light Brigade we've been around for 38 years, so Light Brigade is not a new name. We are the leader, the global leader in fiber optic skills training. So the fiber optic training and everything we really balance ours between the theory and the hands-on. So some people just teach you how to push the buttons. We want you to know why you're pushing those buttons.

Speaker 1: 4:27

You know me, I'm the acronym king. I do the acronym challenge on LinkedIn all the time CFHP, what's?

Speaker 3: 4:33

that Certified Fiber to the Home Professional? Is that one of Light Brigades?

Speaker 1: 4:39

Fiber Broadband Association. Oh, okay, okay, see, I didn't know that. See, I learned something new today. Every time I talk to you, every time I talk to you, I always learn something new. So you're probably more plugged in than most of the people that I know. When it comes to the demand for fiber right now, especially with the whole federal broadband initiative, can you give us a high level view of how big is that demand right now?

Speaker 3: 5:04

Can you give us a high level view of how big is that demand right now? Chuck, that demand is huge and it's been huge even before Bede. And the other big player right now is the increase in data centers. So, between you know, obviously in data centers we're increasing a lot with the AI and a lot of the training and things like that that are out there for people are really around power and cooling and everything in the layer two and above in the OSI model. So we felt a need to bring that to the market for data center technicians. But the other huge driver is definitely being the fiber to the home and, as we know, much of our country is covered with some sort of broadband right now.

Speaker 3: 5:48

But, the interesting fact is there's 10.7 million homes in the United States right now that have no access to either broadband coverage or even cellular that they can even get a cellular signal where they live. So that is the idea behind BEAT is to really be getting broadband to those folks in those rural areas. So you know, with that, over the program of Bede, which is expected to last, you know, four to five years, it's had some delays here. It's just a recent thing. I just saw this morning that they're doing speeding, I think, an act called Speed Up Bede, to kind of take some of the red tape away and get that moving a little faster.

Speaker 3: 6:28

But you know Fiber Broadband Association. They had said they estimate over that five year period we're looking for at least 205,000 new technicians. Wow.

Speaker 1: 6:38

That's a lot of technicians.

Speaker 3: 6:40

Other estimates go as high as 800,000. The government accountability office in the US is a little over 30,000 just this year alone. So that's the need by the newer technology or the newer installations. But there's a problem that came before that that is making that even harder. Making that even harder. And the problem before that is, if you think back 25, 30 years ago, the school system started encouraging students to not pursue blue collar jobs and to go after the four-year degree for an office type of job.

Speaker 3: 7:16

And so that led to driving out some of the VOTEC programs and the shop classes and things like that. And so what we're left with right now is we're left with the back end of that, where the average technician age in the United States is right around 45 years old, between 43 and 45. And the thing is, especially if they are union or you know, depending on where they're employed, they're getting to the point where they could retire from that first job or those technicians are moving out and going to a management role or something like that. So the problem we've been dealing with for about five or six years now is for every five of those technicians that leave the field, there's only one to come in and replace it.

Speaker 3: 7:58

So, there's been a lot of effort through Bixie, through ETA, fba, light Brigade, all of us to really try to help and to drive and bring those technicians into the space. Most recently we've been engaging and implementing our courses into workforce development programs around the country via community colleges and state workforce development. So we're really trying. We know it's a huge gap. The biggest problem is the attraction of that and that's actually something that many of us now are trying to do is even catch them through some of the CTE, the career technology education in the middle schools and high school level, really getting them interested into that career path, because once they graduate there's nothing out there telling them hey, there's a great role in telecom, go pursue that.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Oh, great Telecom's a great career to be in. And for those who don't know, sean mentioned B. That's an acronym, it's Broadband Equity and Access Deployment Program. The federal government dropped I think it was what $40 million, $42 million, $43 million.

Speaker 3: 9:06

It's $48.5 billion.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Billion. Oh, that's right. I said million didn't I, Million wouldn't go very far.

Speaker 3: 9:14

And that number to a lot of people and it's certainly not going to get political here but we start hearing about a lot of this spending and those big, big, big numbers and people would think initially well, $48.5 billion, that's a tremendous amount of money. What we know is that is the actual rollouts are going to cost two to three times that until they're installed. So that's not like someone going out and installing a new deployment and getting a 100% reimbursement. Some of them are going to be 25% to 50%, somewhere in that range that they actually get refunded back. Otherwise, those networks are going to cause a tremendous amount of money. So it sounds big but in the scope of things it really isn't.

Speaker 1: 9:55

No, it's not. When you look at the entire country and I think you said it's going to give access to what did you say? 10 million homes 10.7 million yeah. Yeah, it's going to give the access to what'd you say? 10 million homes, 10.7 million, yeah, yeah, don't, don't have, don't have, yeah. It's funny when you said that, I was like I want to buy one of those, cause sometimes I just want to unplug away from the internet.

Speaker 3: 10:13

Yeah Well, it's, it's. It's interesting, within that BDAC there was, there's what's called digital equity, and way back when it first was established.

Speaker 3: 10:20

Some of that digital equity funding would go to training. Unfortunately, that's been pulled back and I agree with. What they were doing with it is they realized that two things are happening in these rural areas there are going to be very small ISPs and there are people that understand they didn't come from that space in that area. So they need to be trained on running an ISP and, at the same time, it's educating the community. I mean, if something for you and I, chuck, we're sitting here on a you know doing video conference here, a lot of that 10.7 million people have never experienced this.

Speaker 3: 10:58

They don't know what an Amazon. They can't place an Amazon word. Well, I guess we're supposed to be boycotting that right now. I don't know, uh, but, but uh, I read that last night. But anyway, um, but you know, like what an amazon is, a google search, different things like that it's. So we need to spend some of that money to really get those people up and understanding it, knowing that it's not big brother. The internet is not big brother. Looking at us now, for those of us that have used it for 25 or 30 years, we're used to it, but there's a subset of our population that has no access to this.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yeah, it's a great resource. It certainly is, and it's a great resource. It's also a great distraction, and also it could be a great misleading thing as well, too.

Speaker 2: 11:43

It can be, and also it could be a great misleading thing as well too.

Speaker 1: 11:45

But yeah, if you don't have Internet or any kind of form of Internet, you're behind. You know 80 percent of the people in the United States, because we all have it and we're using it to make our lives better, to work more efficiently, to find out information, to go to go on platforms, to buy stuff, have it shipped to our house. I don't believe in in in boycotting anything. I just you know I got way too many other things to worry about. Like, oh my gosh, I forgot to put the security fencing around the broiler chickens last night. Am I going to lose my chickens to a predator tonight? I got more important things to burn and worry about than worrying about what companies' political beliefs are.

Speaker 4: 12:25

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Speaker 1: 13:10

So now you said the estimates are 200,000 to 800,000 need additional fiber techs, right? What's going to be the biggest challenges the company face in finding those skilled fiber technicians?

Speaker 3: 13:23

Well, traction is number one, finding those folks that are out there, and you know there are some things that it goes down to even knowing how to hire them.

Speaker 3: 13:34

And you know, I know you and I talked about there's some common things you see, especially in tier two and tier three telecoms, when they're putting out a job field or a posting for someone and they're asking for something like being able to distinguish colors, have a valid driver's license, be able to work in confined spaces and on ladders. But the reality is they hire for that skill, but what those people are doing is something that's far more complex. It's accessing outside plant cables, doing proper routing, splicing building enclosures, building these networks. Maybe they're testing, they're troubleshooting On those criteria of having a driver's license and being able to distinguish colors. That doesn't make them able to do that. So with this demand, people are contractors, they're hiring people in, they're trying to attract these people, but chances of getting someone that's already trained is kind of slim, and so you really come down to some options, and some of those options are you can do the on-the-job training which is there.

Speaker 3: 14:37

The younger generation we know loves the YouTube training. You know which. There's good and bad to that right. Or there are definitely some formalized trainings, that and having those credentials and certifications that can also help someone be more marketable when they are looking for that job, to be able to have those credentials. So you know, we really want to make sure that those technicians are are trained well so that they can perform, are trained well so that they can perform when you have untrained and unskilled workers. We've seen the mistakes that are out there the reliability not pressure testing your splice case, having poor splices, not using splice trays. There's a lot that happens there and it's funny. I think you and I talked about it once before and I had to block it. I had to stop looking at it, but there was a Facebook page called Fiber WTF Moments.

Speaker 3: 15:31

And it's a disaster that people opening up a cabinet in the outside plant or a splice case.

Speaker 1: 15:36

It's like some of them even had notes in there.

Speaker 3: 15:38

Sorry, too bad. You have to look at this and those are sometimes funny. They're humiliating sometimes, but when we're doing something like this, where we're bringing a service to people that have never had it before, they've been waiting, it's almost like having indoor plumbing 80 years ago. Right, you want it, you want it and we get it. You want it to work, so we want to make sure that those technicians are trained to make something, have that reliable network there. So six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road, you don't have a splice come apart or water get into a splice case that's frozen. Now you have a splice cycle, something like that.

Speaker 3: 16:15

That's going to take their, take their service down.

Speaker 3: 16:17

So you know, we want to make sure that we are getting people trained the right way. The unfortunate thing and I have a good buddy of mine. He's a contractor in Maryland and he used to only want the best of the best. He would turn away more people than he would take and we had a little ingest type of moment where he basically says I check to see if they have a pulse and I ask him one question can you assure me you will come to work four out of five days a week minimum?

Speaker 1: 16:48

Wow. So that's how?

Speaker 3: 16:50

because of the man that's you really can't be as selective as you were before. Really, you want that person. If they're going to come to work, I mean hopefully they come five days a week. And he said, look, give me at least four out of five. You know you're going to, don't call in three days a week, we'll train you and and you know he does and he turns these guys into very, very good technicians. So it's just, unfortunately there's not a pool of people sitting out there that are well-skilled in this, that are ready to work but don't already have jobs.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Yeah, you know, I was thinking as you were talking through that. You know cause. You know this. This is the breed, the BDAC, to bring information to people who don't have it. So let me in the DC area, I would imagine that the B dollars probably don't really increase the need of technicians, but if you're in you know some rural town in you know in Arkansas, where there's not much, I would think that they would need more.

Speaker 3: 17:57

You're 100 percent right, and so that that does create a bigger problem. So another industry veteran like you, me, has a voice in the industry. About a year ago I wrote an article challenging some of those numbers of needed technicians, and his viewpoint was why in the world do we need all of these new technicians? We've built out broadband and fiber to the home everywhere else in the country. Well, there were a couple of things that come into play there. The first is just because it's built. When it's built doesn't mean you're out of a job. There are still plenty of maintenance and expansion. So those people are still employed by the people that they work for when they deployed at that place.

Speaker 3: 18:36

It's not just like they're sitting around and we can just take them there. The other problem is you really have a wage disparity and so I don't know. It was a year and a half, two years ago Betsy Conroy and I did an article where we were really talking about the need for technicians. In this demand and some of the research that we had come up with, we saw significant disparities. Where you know, someone in the New York or North Jersey, even DC metro area, might be making $90 an hour as a technician, and then you go to rural Alabama, mississippi, louisiana, and they're paying their technicians $17 to $19 an hour. You are not going to have anybody from making $90 that normal expectation of pay and having to bring them up from somewhat almost nothing to something, and so you just can't shift them around. So that is that regional is making a big difference.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Right, and if you learn a skill like installing, terminating, certifying fiber optic cabling, that's a skill you can take anywhere. You can take it from Alabama to Miami or to New York or to Philly or to Los Angeles, easily transfer it over. And it got me thinking too, because I did a project once oh, where was it? It was in Mississippi. We did a project for a two-story building for a very well-known telecom company back a long time ago, before the owner got put in jail for cooking the books I won't say who it was, but you probably figured out if you put that in Google right. And so we had to hire a whole bunch of local people and many of them, when I was going through the interview process, expressed the concern what happens after you finish this project. And I think you know I didn't have a good answer for them, because you know, once that project was done, we were done moving out of the shop.

Speaker 1: 20:43

But this is a little different because once you learn those skills I already mentioned, you can go to another part of the country and make you know a lot of money. But you also with edge data centers and you know a lot of money, but you also with edge data centers, and you know more and more data centers getting built that heavily rely on fiber optic cabling. You can easily translate over from this kind of a certification field into doing AI and into doing data centers. So it's, it's. It's not going to skill, it's going to leave you. It's not like you're learning how to repair typewriters, right, it's not a skill. That's going to die on you. Fireoptic is here for a while.

Speaker 4: 21:12

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Speaker 3: 22:10

Yeah, that's one of the things we talk about with our workforce development people that are bringing that program in, because we've seen a lot of that every time, especially here in Pennsylvania where I am, where actually the company you mentioned was headquartered in northwest Pennsylvania before they crashed. That I believe you have, especially in Pennsylvania. We've gone through the steel world, we've gone through coal, where you've whole communities built around that, and then it folds up and it's gone. Most recently, a couple of years ago, I sit on the education curriculum advisory board for Penn State School and at one point there was this huge shift from electronics, communications, computer automation, things like that, to putting a lot of the effort into Marcella's Shell, and that was in Pennsylvania and some of the degree programs were going to outfit these technicians to do that. Well, that's kind of dissipated over the last couple of years and so people worry about that with whether it's in a technical school or a workforce development is okay.

Speaker 3: 23:09

This is the demand now, but what happens later and it's one of the things I really stress to them is, like you know, if you're doing a broadband-focused training, like we're going to talk about, or we do a data center, or we do a general, fiber optics or utilities. Those basic skills are transferable from. If you get out of telecom and say I want to work inside of a data center, you have those skills already. It's not like you have to go re-educate yourself. So it really is kind of future. Well, nothing's future-proof but it's pretty future-proof and you've always seen that trend continue up. You make a great point with the edge data centers because we're going to see more and more of those I mean even micro-edges going beyond the edge.

Speaker 3: 23:48

When we get out to autonomous vehicles and you're at small little data centers on street corners. That's when we get out to autonomous vehicles and you're at small little data centers on street corners. That's all going to use outside plant cable and, as we know, historically nobody likes to share their cable. We've got a ton of cable in the ground. We've got a ton of dark fibers in the ground. People don't want to share a sheath, so it's still going to be trenching, putting some other cable in there, rerunning it, splicing it. You look around the 5G, these small cells, micro cells. You see them up on a utility pole. What do you see hanging on there?

Speaker 3: 24:17

A fiber MST a multi-service terminal hanging there, just like you might do for a fiber to the home. So there are a lot of different verticals there and again, whether it's professional or technician level, you can trade between the two of them and across multiple verticals.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Yep, yeah, let's shift our conversation. Talk about the certification program that you guys just launched, right? Sure, I think you call it the CFOE, if I remember right, the Certified Fiber Optic Expert Program.

Speaker 3: 24:46

Yeah, can you walk us through that? Yeah, sure, so, chuck, that's part of four of them that we've established. So we have the Light Brigade CFOE, which is Certified Fiber Optic Expert, the Light Brigade CBFOT, which is the Certified Broadband Fiber Optic Technician, cbfos, which is the Certified Broadband Fiber Optic Specialist, and then the Certified Broadband Fiber Optic Professional, cbfop, and so we really put those together, you know, and even while all of our courses we do have a industry credential to go along with them, you know whether it's UTC, fba, ETA.

Speaker 3: 25:24

We have those to go along. But you know, people were asking like, okay, there are a lot of people that recognize you as Light Brigade. These are great. But Light Brigade training, having that people have known that for so many years to show that. So we had developed and it was kind of a couple of years in the process of doing that. We had developed overreach. What we call our shield program, because it looks like a shield, is the digital gencher that you're going to get. But we've kind of set that up that starting, you know, with the CFOE. That is, we have that set up for it could be inside plant, it could be outside plant.

Speaker 3: 25:59

We really separated the broadband side, as I mentioned. So anything that's not broadband is in the CFOE and we have. All of our courses are broken out from foundational, intermediate and advanced levels. The easiest way to obtain a CFOE is for you to complete a foundational level course, earn the industry credential, the intermediate course, earn the credential and the advanced course and add the credential After that. You've then earned that where we believe, in partnership with the third party industry, that you have demonstrated those skills, that we can call you a certified philoptic expert. So there we have an idea where it's choose your own adventure, where you pick any of those level courses or we've also broken them out. So an inside plan, an outside plan, utilities, mining, oil and gas. So we hit a lot of different verticals. So we have pathways set out for people that they can earn those in the different verticals.

Speaker 3: 26:59

The broadband side we've really broken that into two main categories obviously the technician and the professional. Starting with the professional, that's really in your designer. And the professional, like what I have in the cfhp, is one that's not installing and not designing. They're in the middle. There might be the business, they might be the, you know, they could be the sales people, but they or scheduling, they need to understand why it was designed the way it was and what the technician's going to be. So we have those as concurrent where you do the certified fiber optic professional and then you do this outside plant design course. Get the industry credential. Then you earn that. Stepping back to the technician, that's one of the things that you know.

Speaker 3: 27:40

Traditional courses, including our own, are normally like a four or a five day course and there's really only so much you can do in that. And so you know, we said we also know that the industry can't send their students or students send their employees for like three continuous weeks of a course or something like that. And there are some of those offerings that are out there where they try to do 144 hours or something like that continues. We have found in our history and we've done this a long time that people are not willing to do that. They'll break it up by a quarter, they'll break it up by two a year or something like that. So we said, okay, we created our broadband fiber optic technician level one course, which is it's really the broadband equivalent to our flagship fiber optics one, two, three course where you're getting all the core fiber knowledge. You get more than an intro into the broadband principles and how that works and then you really get your level one skills and and there are many people, that many technicians, that have only ever taken that level one and they're they're great in splicing, they're great no, tdr testing, prepping cable, whatever it is. But then we said, okay, we're going to take that, move it to a level two where we take the. We learn the basics. Level two, we build upon the basics, okay, and that gets you into the more in-depth of some of those subjects because it's it is a lot of information. It's easier when you have a base knowledge and you're growing upon that, and the same with the hands-on. We go into a little bit more advanced hands-on where you might be doing more splices and different kind of splice cases, different kinds of splitters. You know how to test those, how to test them in line, looking for for problems, things like that. Um, and then I'll temporarily just going to skip over there. There is a step in there.

Speaker 3: 29:24

We do not require it for the certified broadband fiber optic technician, but then we have what is our uh surf, our broadband fiber optic technician, level three, and that is very little theory. We're one and two or split, half and half. Two days of theory, two days of hands on. The level three is more of a capstone. It's almost like you're going for a degree and you had to do a capstone project. So you've learned all that information, you're bringing it together, so you're looking at maybe three hours of theory. You're bringing it together, so you're looking at maybe three hours of theory, and then it's followed by four and a half days of intense hands on where you are placing no-transcript, doing duct work between them, following a work order of this amount of this fiber high fiber count cables.

Speaker 3: 30:10

Going here this is breaking out you might be doing, you know, two, 80 fiber, four, 32. You know you really can't get into a three, four, five, six, you know you can't do that in five days but a high fiber count following the routing paths to what would be a virtual home Cause we in the environment. But they need to do all that, test it, document it and submit the as-billed or the closeout package. So it's really at that point. A lot of training is giving you the skills. We're now taking it and saying you've learned the skills, now apply those. As if someone handed you that job order, the part that I said. And so those three would earn the certified broadband fiber optic technician certification.

Speaker 3: 30:51

The one that sits in the middle is that specialist. So we have four what we call deep dive workshops that comprise the specialists and those are OTDR, deep dive, splicing, deep dive emergency restoration and air blown fiber. So all those subjects are talked about are covered in levels one and two. But these specialized workshops are two-day workshops with just a theory type review on them and then really intense hands-on with simulators and kind of real world things. So the idea is the ideal path would be take level one, level two, then all of the workshops to really really in-depth practice you know it's repetitive at that point and then apply. But we don't require them to take the workshop. You can go straight into that level three. But you know we look at it and say at that point we're confident that we have built those technicians up to know as much as they're going to know and count on them to be building great networks. So we've really put a lot of thought into that and really are proud of the program they've come up with.

Speaker 1: 31:58

I think you have. I mean just you know, because as you're going through the program, it's like he already answered question number two, question number three and question number four. No, no, no, we're good, we're good. So I mean, I think you have thoroughly explained the difference between you know the Light Brigade credentialing process versus some of the others. I think you covered that already pretty good too, and also you know you showed the career path. Now what I want to ask you is because when I looked at the information that you sent me beforehand and it obviously shows that you put some time and effort into coming up with this program but I did notice when I was going through the documentation you sent me, that somebody who completes this gets digital credentials and certifications. Give me an explanation of how that's going to help a technician stand out.

Speaker 3: 32:43

Okay. So about three and a half years ago we decided that we were moving away from well certainly, printed and mailed certificates. A lot of people had already gone to PDF, and you know you can secure a PDF and used to be able to secure a PDF, and over three years ago we really had a kind of a wake up call with our manuals and even our certificates, because Firefox, the browser, firefox you can take a pdf and put it into there with any level of security and it strips the security right out of it. So what you might have is someone gets a pdf, a pdf certificate saying I completed this course, this credential. They go in there and they put their buddy's name on it and print them out. And now you've been to people walking around fraudulent certifications.

Speaker 3: 33:30

So we looked into, you know what solution could we use, and you know about the same time ETA was doing that.

Speaker 3: 33:38

As you know, as an RCDD, you have a Credly digital badge representing your RCDD, as do I, and so we said you know that is a great platform, it's a recognized platform, and so we adopted Credly, and so what it is, you know, when they complete our courses, they they're given the opportunity to accept the digital badge. When they accept the digital badge, that all has an embedded serial number. There's all kinds of traceability. You can't manipulate it. But you must accept that digital credential or that digital badge before you can print your PDF version. So with Incredly you can still print your PDF, but at that point it's going to have kind of a digital watermark in it that you know you're not going to be able to copy that. And those are the ones also that have. You know, we have a lot, well I say most over half of our courses I believe, have VIXI continuing education credits associated with them. You know, obviously that's where we have that code in there, where they turn it in.

Speaker 1: 34:33

So it's not going to make a lot of sense if we don't have the checks and balances there.

Speaker 3: 34:38

But the other thing with that digital credential, it just depends on your level. If I start at the top and you're a designer and you, let's just say, you have the outside plant design credential, just like you can do with an RCDD on your drawings, you can embed that digital credential right into your drawing so someone's reviewing that they can click, that, they can open up and learn, see what, everything that you learned, what that course covered, whether you're the real deal, what you've earned. And so you know other people. You know they do them. Some people do it in social media, some people do it in their email signatures, even on resumes. You're submitting your resume, you have that on there. Someone can actually go through and click using that visual credential. So that's really why we've done it. It gives a lot of opportunity to be able to share that without keeping a piece of paper in your pocket. Or we all remember the little credit card side drivers, license size, certifications. I heard that. I can't read that.

Speaker 1: 35:34

You know well, not all right, we can't read that, but uh, I don't know what you're talking about. I thought my eyesight's perfect, yeah absolutely.

Speaker 3: 35:41

Where are my glasses by?

Speaker 1: 35:42

the way. Yeah, so. So let's talk about getting started. Let's say somebody's listening to this and they're like man, that sounds really cool. I really want to get into it. What's the?

Speaker 3: 35:56

best way for somebody in the industry to get started with this training. Well, so, one of the things that Light Brigade we are business to business, so at the core we require that it's a business putting an employee through. However, as we've known and there's really not a lot we can do with this we have had individuals over the years who start their own LLC just to be able to take the course. So they start their own LLC company with them being employee number one. It is still business to business. We don't encourage that, but we know that it happens.

Speaker 3: 36:28

Outside of that, that's where some of these workforce development programs, some of them that are offered at community college and stuff that individuals can go to, now it can be a placement agency. I mean, you can have these recruitment firms and we've had that before where we have recruitment firms, we're trying to place people. They may say we're sending people through here as employees of us. We can then later place them through here as employees of us. We can then later place them. So you know, if you are listening to this and you are employed, uh, business to business is just fine. Light brigade offers really two core ways of delivering the training. The first is that they uh, there are open classes, so those are classes scheduled around the country. I mean on any given week. Given week, you know, we might be giving you know five to 10 different courses around the country People all say well, where are you located?

Speaker 3: 37:16

Everywhere we have. We have three Currently. At the moment we have three physical white brigade facilities one in Kent, washington, one in Dallas, texas, and one outside of Charlotte, north Carolina. We are going to be expanding all the other facilities, but the majority of our classes still take place. These open classes. We schedule them in hotel conference rooms every week round. So open classes, you can go wherever you like.

Speaker 3: 37:38

The other thing is, if you're you're listening here and you say, gosh, you know, I've got, I've got five or six or even more technicians, technicians, how do I get them all trained? We have what we call custom classes, which means that we bring everything to you, to your location, and it's a closed system where it's only your employees, so it is focused on them. Those classes, even open classes, we also do encourage. If we're covering OTDRs or fusion splice or something like that, we encourage people to bring their own equipment. We provide more than enough equipment for anybody to use in that class and learn. But if they have something like, I've got this brand of splicer, I've got this brand of OTDR they're more than welcome to bring those to the classes as well.

Speaker 1: 38:19

That's one of the advantages of doing a class specifically just for one company they get to learn on their own equipment. Absolutely, you know, it's one thing to go to a class and learn on a. I'm just going to throw names out there. Let's say you learned how to fusion splice on a UCL Swift in the class but you have fiber Fox splicers. Now fusion splicers generally kind of work the same but there's nuances to each of those. So that's the advantage of doing on-site training is you get to play with your own. You do get to learn to train on the equipment you're going to be doing the work with.

Speaker 3: 38:54

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Unfortunately, we get some people go to courses and they bring their equipment and they're even great name brands and they say, well, I want to try on this. And they walk away from the class and say I like what I was using, but I don't want this. Apologies to the owner of the company, these guys are going to be hounding you. Look what I used.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Right, right, the owner who just spent whatever X amount of thousand dollars on that brand new splacer that hasn't even been used yet. Yeah, You're like oh, wait a minute, that's probably not the best plan.

Speaker 3: 39:26

It happens. You know we do, we are. We say our training is vendor agnostic. I mean, obviously you get people's training that there are some that is a commercial for their own product or for their own distribution or whatever. Then you've got the manufacturing training and they all have a tremendous amount of value. We stay vendor neutral on all of the things you know, no matter what. It is a theory, hands-on. There is is one exception to that, and that is that we mentioned the digital badges is.

Speaker 3: 39:55

You know we partnered with Sumitomo Electric Lightwave because you know evaluating Slicers, you know we found that they really are, in our eyes, one of the best of the best and so we partner with them and we offer three levels, depending on which classes, three different levels of um, sumatoma, creditor badges within, where we teach that um and it's just because they're using it on that machine. If you bring in your own machine, you can still do that, you're still earning the skill, you're still learning the skill and everything like that, but um. But that is the one thing and the only reason we don't don't mix and match we've tried it in the past. We're matching three or four fusion splicer brands within a class is now you're working three or four different groups of people at a time and you can't give the one-on-one focus. And I guess that's a good point to mention is it doesn't matter if it's an open class or a custom class. Chuck, we have a very strict seven to one student to instructor ratio.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Say that again for the people in the back.

Speaker 3: 40:57

Okay, so that we have a very strict seven to one student to instructor ratio. That is not something that happens in some other trainings you're going to get in the industry. You might have 25 or 30 people and when it comes to the hands-on some get to try it and some get to observe.

Speaker 1: 41:12

And then we ran out of time.

Speaker 3: 41:14

That's not to say we don't hold classes larger than seven. So the instructor, you got more instructors. Well, the theory instructor can cover as many people, you don't need two instructors to do the theory. But when it comes to hands-on, if we add an eighth person to class, as soon as you hit the eighth person we send a second instructor in for the second. Two days split the group. We hit 15 or well, uh, I'm sorry, I guess we hit 16. Um, when we hit 16, we'll send a third technician we call. We call our instructors. We have the instructor and then the instructors we send to assist. We call them technicians when they go in to do the hands-on part. Right, but, yes, we, we do that, and I mean just recently, I think it was last week in alaska, I don't remember if we had two or three technicians go along with the instructor because we had a class that big.

Speaker 1: 41:57

But we'll send the extra equipment, so it's not it's not a starvation on equipment or uh.

Speaker 3: 42:02

we just we've just really stressed on the instructor to have more. But we also look at, we're always concerned with the learning experience from the student and it's really unfair to them if they can't have that one-on-one time.

Speaker 1: 42:17

You're preaching to the choir, because I've had this conversation with multiple people and you hit the nail on the head. When you're teaching theory, you can teach up to 50 to a hundred people easily one time, but technicians are tactile learners, they want to put their hands on stuff. And one instructor I think when I was a big C instructor I think it was eight students, eight to one, I think and there's a reason for that because you cannot give everybody the intention they need to have to learn hands-on skills. When you have 25 people and one instructor, it just doesn't happen. And let me ask you this question I might have people listening to this show who might have their CFOT Certified Fiber Optic Technician from FOA or their installer fiber from Bixie. Can they benefit from this training? Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 43:03

We do have many people that have a FOA and CFOT have come through our courses. I'm not going to get into the feedback that we receive afterward, but let's just say word of mouth also travels that we've had quite a few of those over the years. The thing is is you know what it really comes down to is where they can benefit is there is a great FOA following.

Speaker 3: 43:32

Jim Hayes has done a great job with that organization and the recognition of the CFO team. It's great, it's a great credential to have. It's great training to have. That is not always recognized. The same thing with Bixie oh, I can be a Bixie tech, but that's not always recognized. And, quite honestly, light Brigade might not be always recognized. We're looking at it, that we're pairing it. A lot of ours are like we'll have a Light Brigade and an ETA, or a Light Brigade and FBA, or Light Brigade and Utilities, whatever it may be. And you know, it's just another one in the box and, I'm sure, reciprocal. There have been people that have done light brigade training that have later gone to do a CFOT.

Speaker 1: 44:18

Honestly, you know I'm not going to rank one over the other. Well, I'm not going to ask you to. I'm not going to ask you because you know they're like cars, right, you've got people who only buy Ford and people who only buy Chevrolet will never somebody buys Chevrolet will never recognize when Ford makes a good product. And that's how. That's how I look at fiber optic training. Right, you know the big three are going to be you, bixie, and and and the FOA. And, based on I've I've been in Bixie classes, I've seen the FOA stuff. I haven't been in your classes yet, but I've seen your stuff and, based on what I've seen, I think you guys are right up there with all of them.

Speaker 3: 44:49

Yeah, I mean currently we only have one, but in the past we've had a couple. So we have light brigade has full-time instructors that are direct employees of light brigade, and then we also have you know we don't.

Speaker 3: 45:00

It's not like I just pull somebody this week and we'll never see you again. But we also have a pool of what we call contract instructors that are just like light Brigade. They've gone through the same training. They have the same field experience. That's one thing we have. You have to have the field experience. A lot of our guys are retired that early retirement out of the field then become instructors, and we're always looking for great instructors, but we have currently one you and I both know him, you know exactly what I'm talking about who is a light brigade contract instructor and he's also an FOA instructor.

Speaker 1: 45:36

Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm not going to say his name.

Speaker 3: 45:38

Nope, he does both and we've had those in the past and we really don't have a problem with it. You know, as long as there's no underhanded stuff there, I mean we don't. We don't want that person sliding people out of the FOA class and bringing us just like we don't want them, you should be coming over here. And as long as they're honest, like that which we vet that very well and have that in writing, we don't necessarily care. I mean it's a value. It's two different markets. They're different price points, and that's another thing. In the industry there are a variety of different price points. I mean you can go get a fiber optic training for $325.

Speaker 1: 46:19

But do you get what you pay for, though, and then you can have something that's over $3,000.

Speaker 3: 46:27

And you may or may not get what you're paying for there. You know we're sitting in the middle, which is a little different than, say, the FOA, but everybody's got a budget and a goal for their training, and you know. That's why it's prudent to investigate your options.

Speaker 1: 46:40

Yeah, yeah. One of the biggest complaints I hear quite often is especially when technicians are looking at fiber optic classes. They usually will complain about the price and I usually tell them, you know, I usually I'll tell what my dad told me. He says you think, you think you think education is expensive? Try stupidity, it is what it is. So let's say, somebody's listening to the show, they're hot, hot to trot, they want to get this training, they want to get this certified. You know, get know, get certified through light brigade. How should they? What's their next step?

Speaker 3: 47:12

a couple ways. They can simply visit light brigadecom, very well laid out on there, where what our courses are. They can add them to their cart. Um, they can, they can, they can purchase that now there are some add-ons. When you're adding on the bta certification or the manual, something like that, um, it may be one of those things that gets it far and you check out, it goes to a whole one of our account managers or business development managers.

Speaker 3: 47:37

They're not pushy salespeople, but they will call you, get your information. Get that all lined up. You know making sure everything goes well there.

Speaker 3: 47:43

Likewise, you can reach out to sales at light brigadecom. That'll either put you in touch with Pam, pam, alexa or Linda in our in our business development. Out to sales at light brigadecom. That'll either put you in touch with pam uh, pam alexa or linda in our in our business development uh, depending which vertical they'll handle which whichever uh account that is, and they'll help you out with that as well. And, as always, I think you'll share my my contact information. Um, sure many people out here are watching this know me. Feel free to reach out, give me a call, send me an email, whatever. I'm not going to be the one that's going to sign you up for your class, but I will definitely put you in the hands of the proper person. And likewise, if anybody wants to discuss a specific class or try to compare two classes and say which one should I be doing, I will. I'll listen to what your needs are and I'll help make a recommendation. I'm not going to oversell you. I'm not going to try to cut you short either.

Speaker 1: 48:34

And I will. I will tell the listener this I've known Sean now for I don't know what five years, six years, something like that. I think I met you when I first started doing the podcast, I think actually. And I tell you what Sean's a quality guy. He's not going to steer you wrong. You ask him a question. He's like me. He's going to tell you exactly what you need to know to make the right decision. Sometimes you like to hear that information and sometimes you don't like to hear that information, but you know it comes from the heart and it doesn't go through any other filters of prejudice, through one organization versus another organization, standards, organization versus. He's going to give you the straight up good to go. So I'm super excited about this program and you know, even though I'm not in the field anymore, I'm looking to maybe snag one of your former students after a class yeah and do a post-class thing with them. Yeah, well, chuck, just I mean you just kind of mentioned something.

Speaker 3: 49:35

There is that not steering. We some people know that light brigade. We do also have a product distribution side. We don't use that to influence the class in any way, but we do give all students to go through, do have the opportunity. On most products it ends up being I believe it's a 10 discount after being a student.

Speaker 3: 49:44

So you know you're looking, you know doing this place is otd or whatever, but the the one thing that our product manager will not do is, even if you think you know exactly what it is you want, he wants to hear how you're going to be using that. And in many cases there have been people that said I need this quad OTDR with all this stuff, and he said hold on a second, no, you really don't. And look, I'm going to save you five grand by doing this and you know there's a lot. We've had a lot over the years the appreciation of that, that we are not pushing to sell you the most expensive thing or something you don't need. We want to make sure that you're making the right decision for what you're doing and that comes with training or the product side.

Speaker 3: 50:23

So honestly feel free to reach out to us there about fear. To reach out to us we are. There's not a pushy self person in our organization. There you go.

Speaker 1: 50:30

There you go, sean. Thank you for coming on again. I'm super excited to see how this program flourishes and I, and knowing you and knowing light brigade cause I've met, I've met everybody from the CEO all down, I've you guys are going to go far with this program. I really do believe it.

Speaker 2: 50:50

I hope so. Thank you so much, chuck. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to let's Talk Cabling, the award-winning podcast where knowledge is power and the low voltage industry connects. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your crew. Got questions or ideas for the show? Chuck wants to hear from you. Stay connected, stay informed and always aim for excellence. Until next time, keep those cables clean, your standards high and your future bright. Let's Talk Cabling, empowering the industry, one connection at a time.