The availability of fibre to the home broadband services in the UK has increased dramatically in the last few years – fibre reached just 18% of households in 2018 but increased to around 65% in the first quarter of 2024 with some analysts predicting 70% coverage by 2025. But the UK government has an ambitious target of extending gigabit-capable fibre networks to 85% of properties by 2025. The European Union has similar fibre broadband reach figures and expansions plans as the UK. So, there is much more work needed to reach these objectives.

Fibre installation needs skilled personnel so altnets and incumbent operators require an ever-expanding pool of expertise to realise their expansion plans.
Apprenticeships are a proven way of delivering staff with the required skills and knowledge to not only carry out today’s tasks but also provide the network planners and managers of the future.

PTT has recently launched a new “Optical fibre installation and testing” online course that along with other PTT courses such as “Telecoms access networks” and “Telecoms testing and fault-finding” cover the knowledge requirements of the “Telecoms field operative (Level 2)” apprenticeship standard.

A recent UK government report highlighted that nearly a third of all unfilled job vacancies were due to the employer not finding the skills they need. The sectors most affected by this shortage include those involved with Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

And it’s not just the UK experiencing this problem. Similar skills shortages for technology-based roles have been reported in the European Union and the USA.

The provision of apprenticeships has an important role in providing the skills and knowledge necessary for a productive and motivated workforce. Germany has long recognised the importance of apprenticeships for a thriving economy and the UK government has, perhaps belatedly, also encouraged the development and delivery of rigorous and relevant apprenticeship programmes.

Although providing an apprenticeship scheme has medium to long term benefits for employers, the short term economic and administrative burden may be an impediment especially for SMEs. Therefore, apprenticeship programmes should be designed to minimise the impact on an employer’s revenue earning activities and minimise the running costs.

Another issue for ICT employers is finding a further education college that delivers specialised telecoms and ICT training. These may be some distance from an organisation’s site and the effectiveness of the delivered training varies.

PTT has several years’ experience of working with employers and training providers in delivering a blended learning approach to ICT apprenticeship programmes that includes the use of online learning. Such an approach provides the flexibility required by employers while minimising costs and ensuring a consistent quality of training provision.

The “Blended learning approach to apprenticeships” white paper discusses the delivery of apprenticeships in the UK, the benefits of a blended learning approach, and the design of such a programme with reference to case studies of successful programmes.

Back in the 1990s access to the Internet for the average person involved a dialup modem that squeaked and burbled to achieve the heady speeds of tens of kilobits per second. If that person was instantly teleported from the 1990s to now, he or she would be amazed at the broadband speeds we now take for granted and even more flabbergasted at being able to watch videos over the Internet without a landline connection.

But despite those significant improvements in fixed line and mobile speeds in the last 30 years with 2024 broadband speeds tens of thousands of times faster than those in 1994, our thirst for speed appears unquenchable with the march of progress apparently unstoppable.

Currently, fibre to the home services are typically provided by a passive optical network (PON) operating at 10 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s). But not satisfied by that, Nokia and Google Fiber have recently trailed a PON operating at 50 Gbit/s. Service providers will be relieved to hear that 50G and 10G PONs can share the same fibres. And 100 Gbit/s PONs are not far over the horizon.

Meanwhile in the mobile camp, a BT trial of a 5G standalone (SA) system achieved download speeds of 1.85 Gbit/s. This was made possible by using carrier aggregation, a first for any European operator. In the BT trial, three FDD radio carriers were combined with two TDD carriers to increase capacity.

The provision of 5G SA with carrier aggregation will provide high data rates for mobiles in areas of high demand such as city centres.

PTT offers a window on the latest telecoms technologies with its catalogue of online courses. You can learn about 5G SA mobile networks and carrier aggregation in the PTT course 4G and 5G radio access networks. The PTT course Next generation access networks describes the capabilities and operation of the latest generations of passive optical network.