In these doom-and-gloom times of credit crunch, how many times have you heard that the first budget to be cut will be training?  A recent report by e-Skills UK found that just 27% of all UK workers received training in the last 13 weeks and that training was most likely to be delivered at the employer’s premises and paid for by the employer.

The IT & telecoms industry invests on average £3300 per person being trained each year (off the job training and associated costs) – just 15% of telecoms training being done by e-learning.  Of the companies who do not invest in training or who do not invest as much, 84% believe their people are adequately trained – but then 92% of these companies believe lack of training is impacting on their business! Source: e-skills Bulletin. Quarter 2, 2008.

So – a lot of numbers but what does it all mean?

Is it that employers send groups of their people on expensive (perhaps vendor-specific) training courses once or twice a year, and consider their training “done”?  Or is it that they expect training to be done by osmosis?

Everyone knows that there is a lack of telecoms trainers, and, as instructor-led training is seen by some as the preferred option, they are willing to pay a premium for quality telecoms training.  But how do you know that you are sending your people on the right courses and that they will benefit from this expensive training method?  Do you know enough about your people’s existing skills before they go on that 2, 3 or 4 day course?  And are you only sending them on that time consuming training course just because the vendor is offering it?

The simple answer is to invest in some e-learning as ‘pre-training’.  In the ever-changing telecoms world, it’s vital that every method of learning is incorporated into your training strategy – and this is where e-learning will give you more “bang for your buck”! 

Before your people attend group training sessions, invest in some e-learning – it will bring them up to speed, familiarise them with the topic and ensure that they get the most out of the course.  Your instructor-led training provider should then be able to reduce the length of the classroom sessions reducing the impact of training on core business activities.

During e-learning you can track their progress and tackle any knowledge gaps.

After the training course, e-learning is there again to act as a revision tool and a reference guide.

Put simply – investing perhaps £100 on an e-learning course can ensure that your people get the most benefit from a £2000 instructor-led training course.

PTT’s e-learning courses start at £60+VAT and cost on average £105+VAT – buying in bulk can reduce this cost by a large margin!

Can you afford NOT to include e-learning in your training strategy?  For more details, ask Elaine.

PTT – Providers of Telecommunications Training, the UK’s leading provider of e-learning for the telecoms industry – is delighted to announce a partnership with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO). The CTO is an international development partnership which aims to bridge the digital divide by delivering unique knowledge sharing programmes.

PTT will provide its extensive range of e-learning courses to the CTO for use in its “ILearn@CTO” learning portal.  The courses will be available through the CTO for those in the Commonwealth and beyond. 

All courses will be completed on a computer – either using the Internet or a CDROM.  This will allow people in remote locations and developing countries to improve their knowledge and skills in a cost-effective, manageable way. 

Trainees will have 12 months access to their course, allowing them to complete it at their own pace, anytime, anywhere.

PTT’s Managing Director, Bob Nott says “This is a fantastic partnership.  The work of the CTO is crucial to developing telecoms skills in the Commonwealth.  We are delighted to have been chosen as their supplier – enhancing our reputation as a leading e-learning provider to the telecoms industry.  E-learning is vital to the developing world because classroom-based training can be too expensive and difficult for those working remotely to attend.  E-learning also ensures that all employees receive the same content.”

The “ILearn@CTO” learning portal will officially launch on the CTO website from 20th October 2008.

About PTT

PTT was founded by telecoms experts in 1993 to be at the forefront of what was then the new field of computer-based training (CBT). Since those early days, the Internet has become an important enabler of learning and PTT has developed considerable expertise in the design and use of online e-learning for the telecommunications and ICT sectors. For more about the telecommunications e-learning offered by PTT visit: www.ptt.co.uk

About the CTO www.cto.int

The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) is an international development partnership between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth governments, business and civil society organisations. It provides the international community with effective means to help bridge the digital divide and achieve social and economic development, by delivering to developing countries unique knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the specific areas of telecommunications, IT, broadcasting and the Internet. The work of the CTO goes back to its creation in 1901 as the Pacific Cable Board. 

There has  been much discussion of late about the effect of new multimedia services on Internet traffic loads and who should pay for the extra network capacity needed to meet the growth in traffic.

In the UK the discussions have been centred around the BBC’s popular iPlayer service which lets users download or stream TV programmes to a PC. The BBC has said that its iPlayer service is accounting for between 3 and 5 per cent of all Internet traffic in Britain. According to figures from UK regulator Ofcom it will cost Internet Service Providers in the region of £830m to pay for the extra capacity needed to allow for services like the iPlayer.

So who pays? Should it be the consumer with metered charges, or the content provider? Or should ISPs absorb the cost of extra capacity?

PTT isn’t going to answer that but we can tell you about the technologies that give consumers access to those bandwidth-hungry services. We have just released two brand new e-learning courses about the provision of ADSL and VDSL broadband services over copper wires. These courses join our existing course which discusses how even more bandwidth can be provided using FTTH or FTTC optical fibre systems. More about these three courses here .

We also offer a course covering the provision of IPTV services over broadband – more here .