Telecom's job challenge

Some 16 years ago, I remember reading the first report produced by the Network Reliability Council, a group set up by the FCC shortly after a series of phone network outages, including one that affected air traffic control in New York while the FCC chairman was on a plane circling LaGuardia Airport.

There were many aspects of that report that were fascinating, along with some that were sleep-inducing, but one anecdote stuck with me. The group assigned to discuss best practices around switching noted that in recent years there had been a small but disturbing number of instances in which a scheduled upgrade to central office switch software had led to a prolonged outage. Most of these occurred during the middle of the night and weren't seriously service-affecting, but a pattern was established. What the NRC learned was that the outages had occurred when younger technicians, accustomed to using PCs, had tried to “reboot” a switch.

The implication was clear: These newbies needed to learn their way around telecom and gain some respect for the massive computing systems that powered the networks.

As we note in this issue's cover story, the industry has now come full-circle. Much in-demand in telecom these days are IT skills and IP knowledge. The move to all-IP networks has created a desire for talent that is not easily met.

Certainly the telecom industry is not alone in facing a talent shortage, even as our country faces record unemployment. As BusinessWeek recently noted, some 3 million jobs in the U.S. go unfilled for lack of trained workers, and companies that are laying off thousands would like to be hiring hundreds if not thousands of other workers with very different skills.

The telecom industry is competing with a wide range of other technology companies to attract this talent, making the task harder. Telecom executives must look at what they can be doing by reaching out to local, regional and even national educational groups to highlight the need for a greater focus on math, science and other curriculum changes that will produce the workers American tech businesses will need to compete globally.

Telecom companies also must work harder to train and retrain the workers they have, to alleviate the economic disruption of layoffs and create a sustainable talent pool for the future. As movement to automated systems reduces manual labor in telecom, the industry has a responsibility to reward loyalty and dedication with prospects for the future.

On a separate note, due to current economic conditions Telephony is combining its July and August issues into a single issue that you will receive in early August.

Have a safe and happy summer.