Broadband isn't often thought of alongside plumbing or electricity when considering trades to work in. And that isn’t any fault of a job seeker. Relative to these traditional trades, it’s a new infrastructure, but it has come a long way. Internet connection is now embedded in nearly every area of life, from healthcare to language preservation. Yet the wires and signals remain hidden in plain sight — as do the paychecks and possibilities within the industry.
For a trade that’s all about connection, there’s a pretty large disconnect in the scope and value of the work, according to Jeannine Lyons. She leads Calix’s global broadband education programs, developing and delivering training and certification solutions for both training providers and individual job seekers.
These roles are still technical trades — with proper training and credentialing being an essential aspect of the vocation. But they don't require pricey four-year degrees.
And like plumbing or ironwork, these jobs can be surprisingly fast tracks to a lucrative living. Fiber splicers, for instance, commonly make over six-figures, depending on the region and employer.
The issue remains: “there are a wealth of students who have no idea that this is something they could even do, be good at, or that it creates a career path,” Lyons told Broadband Nation. More commonly, people stumble into the trade — not knowing a thing about it — and learn to love the work (even building unique lives around it).
But Lyons noted that this disconnect doesn’t solely rest in PR problems. It's about getting schools and programs to think about themselves differently too. She described her team’s work as "dot connecting," helping bridge the gap of understanding between broadband as simple Wi-Fi to what it is now: underpinning infrastructure to everyday life.
“Before, it was just about getting them access to a world-class, technical curriculum,” Lyons said on her work with Calix. “Now it's about getting the schools to think expansively about what these programs mean and how they belong in their center of innovation... I think a lot of these smaller programs at technical colleges, community colleges don't necessarily know that they have a seat at that table."
While that means advocating for curriculum and equipment, Lyons also emphasized that means helping the these programs advocate for themselves to the larger educational world, "helping with the perception to say: there is a huge path forward for stable careers in these fields."
It helps more teachers and students in connecting industries see broadband differently — as Lyons puts it: "That people can get amazing jobs and create stability for their families, for themselves, for their communities, intergenerational well being, and not have to go get some big university degree to do it."
‘Are you a number? Or you got a name?’
To see how this perception gap actually closes for new workers, it's perhaps clearest in the many small but mighty training pathways scattered across the country. Mitchell Technical College’s (MTC’s) Wi-Fi & Broadband Technologies program is one such path, tucked in the 15,000-person South Dakota town.
For 10 consecutive years, the program held a 100% job placement rate for graduates — and only two students in the last two years have not yet been placed.
Michael Benjamin and Jesse Royston, two of the program’s instructors, told Broadband Nation that the learning curve of the broader industry is stark for their students.
“Their knowledge base when they get here is, other than operating their smartphone, pretty much nothing, because they don’t teach this stuff,” said Benjamin — noting most of the students are fresh out of high school and looking for alternative options from pricey universities.
Royston — a graduate of MTC’s program himself — added that it’s not simply lacking a grasp of the technology — but a reasonable, unwitting ignorance of the entire infrastructure that creates connectivity in our lives.
“In general, most people don’t understand what this industry is all about. They just think it works. They have the internet, and it works. They have their cell phone; it just always works. They don’t understand everything that goes on behind the scenes," he described. "I feel like we are the most undervalued industry around.”
But as students come into the program, where the “classrooms are the lab” — with lecture right next to the equipment for practical application — that understanding expands into an imminent livelihood. The 12-student cohort size keeps the program intimate and geared towards individual needs. That’s part of why so many students stick around.
For jobseekers curious about trainings like theirs, Benjamin suggested asking programs about their job placement rate, or what their approach to retention is — digging into career development rather than a quick stop to certification.
“Are you a number? Or you got a name?” Benjamin suggested in sourcing programs like theirs. “We don’t give up on them after they graduate. We stay in contact pretty well together.”
Broadband is a “tight-knit industry” as Royston described, so community support goes a long way. “Be involved. Soak in as much as you can,” he advised. “This industry changes daily. It is hard to keep up with it.”
Even Royston and Benjamin are frequently “heat mapping” the movements of the industry to stay current in their own training — part of why they work with partners like Calix. And just as fiber overhauled the copper infrastructure — changing the necessary training and pathways around it — AI may soon be the strongest signal on the heat map.
Soft skills: ‘The hard skills of the future’
In Lyons’ work with programs like MTC's, AI is starting to open doors — not just in curriculum development but in expanding the mindsets of many educators and programs.
AI’s impacts on workforce remains widely debated, but some consensus seems clear — change is coming. That job market disruption sets a wider stage for talking about change, which Lyons has observed across the education industry. Her consensus: “We're literally preparing people for jobs that don't yet exist using technology that does not yet exist."
Soon, job applicants will need to understand that “soft skills are no longer soft. These are the hard skills of the future,” she explained. “The technology itself is going to remove the need for a focus on things we had to focus on before," soon making critical thinking alongside automated tools the most valuable skill set.
AI is already entering the picture for broadband workers like premise technicians, with automated tools handling a lot of the tedious reporting processes. But reports outline more drastic changes in the next 10-15 years, even in hands on work like construction.
From Lyons' vantage point, AI isn't complete worker replacement, but it is a drastic shift in job duties and what skills are most hirable — whether it's as a fiber splicer or an education leader like herself. She maintains that the human need and human focus won't vanish in the era of automation.
“The human centered use cases are not going to go away,” she argued. “The ability to build a human centered use case using AI is critical."
Interested in exploring job opportunities within the industry? Check out Broadband Nation's jobs board, training portal and Learning Center.