Dorset Council Pilot’s Training Programme for UK Fibre Engineers

The Dorset Council (DCC) in England has secured £20,000 of funding from the Local Government Association’s (LGA) Digital Pathfinders programme in order to help it develop a local pilot training programme for fibre engineers, which could help to boost gigabit broadband provision in the county.

At present there remains a general shortage of skilled fibre engineers, which is largely due to the rapid increase in Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) builds across the UK and this has in-turn stretched the supply. Some smaller network builders are already tackling this by establishing their own training programmes, which would normally have been the preserve of bigger operators and large civil engineering companies.

The good news is that local authorities are also being encouraged to provide support for such efforts, which may be particularly important in Dorset where only around 15% of premises can currently access a gigabit-capable broadband connection; this compares poorly with the UK’s overall figure of around 65% (once VMO2’s DOCSIS upgrade is taken into account).

The DCC estimates that Dorset the county needs “around 300 [additional] engineers” to fulfil the government’s rollout ambitions, and so they’ve secured £20,000 to pilot a new training programme.

Cllr Jill Haynes, Dorset Council, said:

“In Dorset 97% of premises now have access to superfast broadband but the future is gigabit-capable, and for that we are far behind the rest of the country.

A huge factor affecting this is the national shortage of fibre engineers and in Dorset we want to take matters into our own hands and train people locally to fulfil these essential roles.

Having enough fibre engineers in Dorset, will help broadband suppliers access the expertise needed and roll out full fibre to more of our premises in the county.”

At this point £20,000 is just a drop in the ocean and training up new engineers is an expensive process, but this funding is only designed to “help get things off the ground“. The DCC claims that a consortium of stakeholders from the private, public, and voluntary sector will soon “come together to develop the plans and attract further investment.”

Anyone interested in finding out more about the fibre engineer training project, or would like to get involved, can email connectingdorset@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk .