The Vicious Cycle of the Supply Chain in Fiber Broadband – Is an End in Sight?

The supply chain is a top concern for nearly every industry and has significantly impacted service provider fiber buildout. New funding and training programs offer hope that supply chain and labor issues won’t stall fiber rollouts forever. Vendors can alleviate the backlog by providing parts or supplies that can scale (up or down) rather than satisfy a small or niche application. This will help consolidate inventory and materials, reducing time to market and leading to fewer supply failure points. Phasing out legacy tools and equipment will force service providers to upgrade toward more modern architectures and network components and potentially keep them on track with deployments. The broadband industry is also experiencing a significant labor shortage, but not because of the pandemic. The need is due to the lack of skilled workers to install fiber. It takes people to connect threads and perform installations, and without them, there’s a real possibility that the speed of rollouts will continue to be slow in the future. New bills and government programs, such as the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, COVID-19 relief as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and the newly passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, of which $65 billion is slated for broadband, will create thousands of jobs. While this lack of materials and labor is slowing down the speed of broadband deployment, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The newly passed infrastructure bill, state initiatives and a strong nationwide focus on workforce development offer hope for a turnaround that will make broadband more accessible to more people across the US.

[Deborah Kish is vice president for research and marketing at the Fiber Broadband Association.]