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Coal Miners Strike Gold With Fiber Optics Fiber optics is providing a growing group of former Colorado coal miners with new careers while allowing them to stay in the town they know and love. Through a confluence of ingenuity and timing, when Lightworks Fiber & Consulting began winning more and more contracts to deploy fiber-optic cable for local utility company Electric Light Works (later sold to coop United Power), the firm needed more team members to dig the necessary trenches. Around that time, two of three coal mines shut their doors and miners sought work in a region almost totally dependent on once rich loams of the ore, according to a report by National Public Radio (NPR). Spouses and Lightworks owners Eric and Teresa Neal almost immediately turned their barn into a classroom and began educating interested miners on splicing, trenching and other components of laying cable. In October, when NPR's story ran, the Neals had trained about 80 coalminers (approximately 800 were laid off). A fiber optic splicer with one year of experience earns between $20 and $30 per hour, according to a (filled) job posting for Lightworks in Denver. Benefits for the full-time job include full medical, dental and 401K, the ad said. This is less than miners earn -- but there are a lot of advantages unrelated to salary and demand for these skills. After all, when you're endangering your life underground and risking your future health, the least you can expect is a decent take-home check. What other jobs would transition naturally into broadband? Are there other declining industries where employees or businesses could segue into a digital role? Related posts:
— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana.
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In a flurry of activity throughout the week, Donald (DJ) LaVoy, Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture, and his team spent about $145.8 million in the non-urban or suburban areas of seven states.
Calix reported revenue of $120.19 million – up 4% – in Q4 2019, putting a bounce in the step of company president and CEO Carl Russo and a shine to Calix's ongoing transition from hardware vendor to a provider of platforms enabled by cloud, APIs and subscriber experience.
Looking to curtail e-waste and improve the bottom line, BT will require customers to return routers and set-top boxes, although subscribers will not have to pay a fee when they receive regular broadband equipment.
The industry standards organization is looking to ease operator pain from residential WiFi, while it also sees initiatives in connected home and other projects bear fruit.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.1 across its entire footprint gave Rogers Communications the ability to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s,
contributing to a broadband segement that generated about 60% of the Canadian operator's $3.05 billion (US) in Q4 cable earnings.
 WebinarsARCHIVED
Thursday, August 4, 2022
11:00 a.m. New York / 4:00 p.m. London The digital divide in North America is leaving millions without adequate broadband. Incumbents operate in “islands” of connectivity, serving densely populated areas and, at a national scale, perpetuating the digital divide in the gaps in between their service footprints. Regional ISPs have a clear role in closing that gap. These regional ISPs operate in a highly fragmented landscape, including smaller wireless and FTTH incumbents, satellite ISPs, electric co-ops, tribal communities, and municipalities in public/private partnerships. These regional ISPs face the same cyber threats and operational challenges as their Tier 1 counterparts, but with far fewer resources and revenue-generating population density. As a result, many regional ISPs have developed highly innovated business models for access and core technology, partnerships, financing and services. The discussion will cover:
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