ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A fiber optic cable may be no wider than a human hair, but its impact stretches far beyond its size.<\/p>\n
The thin strands help move data quickly across homes, businesses, cell towers, and data centers. As demand grows, so does the need for workers trained to install and maintain the technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe demand for this is incredible, and it really was fueled a couple years ago with fiber to the home,\u201d said Sean Kelly, general manager of Light Brigade, a fiber optics training company.<\/p>\n
Kelly said the industry is facing a major workforce gap, with a five-to-one ratio of workers retiring compared with those replacing them. He said about 200,000 new technicians are needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI data centers and other types of data centers are springing up everywhere,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether that creates job opportunities, Kelly answered simply: \u201cHuge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly is training 13 community college instructors at Lehigh Carbon Community College during a four-day fiber optics course. The goal is to prepare those instructors to teach the next generation of technicians.<\/p>\n
The course is being held in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is working to build a national education network for future workers, 85% won’t work for Amazon.<\/p>\n
Nick Lee-Romagnolo, principal workforce development leader for AWS, said fiber optic jobs are protected from automation because they require hands-on technical work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about hands-on jobs where we have people out in the facilities, out on the sides of the roads doing actual work with their hands, but they need real technical skills,\u201d Lee-Romagnolo said.<\/p>\n
For LCCC networking and introductory computers instructor, Joyce Thompson, learning fiber optics means eventually bringing that training back to students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot to learn,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cOh my gosh, my head is spinning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The training is designed to help future workers build the connections homes, businesses and data centers increasingly depend on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A fiber optic cable may be no wider than a human hair, but its impact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":["post-260633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}