Time to end the MSO-Contractor Squeeze
Douglas Marlowe
Founder at teachITnow, Inc since 2008 - I analyze your processes, review how data is generated and used, and where your bottlenecks are robbing you of money, time, and performance.
Ever see Lincoln cry on a penny? Just give it to a purchasing agent at an MSO or carrier and watch them pinch it so hard the tears flow.
The Telecom Act of 1996 created the gold rush to profits and innovation. Expansion, consolidation, and innovation created a greater dependence on contractors to build and maintain the physical infrastructure.
Contracting was a great place to be. The industry was booming, always growing, innovating, and yet, someone, somewhere, felt that they were paying too much for experienced labor.
Once upon a time management saw the contractors as electricians and plumbers, licensed, certified, boded and insured. And, contractors invested in training, typically from NCTI. To the techs, there seemed to be a career path.
I don't know what happened or when exactly, but for the last 20 years at least, the rate cards for aerial and underground new build, rebuild, maintenance, and repair, have steadily dropped, causing a whole basket of problems, the worst being a critical shortage of trained technicians.
We can whine about how bad it is or we can work to fix it.
- How about establishing national standards for licensing outside plant technicians. There's a lot of opportunity here but the traditional sources are not carrying this ball, as their revenue is primarily from MSOs, MSO techs, and industry sponsors. I think we need a new player along the lines of Franklin Snider and his CATV Training Institute.
- Motivate the MSOs and carriers to require that only licensed techs are working on their systems and have them increase their rates to allow for better training and quality auditing tools.
- How about an apprentice, journeyman, master set of job titles?
The MSOs need to be partners in this solution. Sadly, they seem to blame the contractors for this crisis.
If there isn't a start at licensing and certification, I can only see fewer techs, poorly educated, making mistakes, and affecting quality and profits. The workforce today is demoralized with a 100+% turnover in technicians in major markets.
Anyone else working to fix this? Please let me know.
Comcast field technician
5 年The main issue is pay. Over the years i have noticed a rapid decline in pay for said contracters. Client companies demanding the same work if not more for a cheaper price. Most of those experienced techs got fed up and left the industry.
Founder at teachITnow, Inc since 2008 - I analyze your processes, review how data is generated and used, and where your bottlenecks are robbing you of money, time, and performance.
5 年Oh just was asked by a client. Need experienced techs to do FTTH and Ethernet fulfillment in the home. MDU and SFU work is here in Palm Beach County all thru 2020. Need another 20 techs. Ya can contact me.
30 years of data-centric OSP experience, including exceptional administrative, construction, financial, and project management skills.
5 年This problem is deep and systemic. Having been at the forefront of implementing the only solution to ever address this, I can prove that there is a solution. As being terminated by a tag team of market and regional directors who either didn’t understand the importance of what we did..or who understood all too well that controls would remove their opportunity to divert funds for discretionary use, I can prove that there is limited buy in from the top at the MSO’s. Until there is accountability inside the MSO hierarchy (for real using control systems) the money will not flow correctly and the construction contractors will continue to struggle to work inside a diseased and failing system of unchecked management where market directors literally make up the results their VPs expect and want, without any verification or real control over those numbers. This leads to false projections and hopeful - but not accurate - accounting, and again the contractors (and employees) will bear the burden of unrealistic goals set against fake accounting that is unable to be operationalized and literally failed before beginning. Sean L Bristol asked the important question: what MSO CFO is brave (and honest) enough to fix it?
Field Operations at Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable)
5 年The money is there. Internal incompetence in management goes all the way to the top. I could name a few VP's of Operations in several regions (at several companies) who have absolutely no business being in their position - for many reasons... Mostly due to lack of experience in the field; more importantly, the inability to care about numbers. Sadly, that trickles all the way down to local management as well. The only numbers they care about are the ones going into their bank accounts at the end of the week. There are not enough small business contractors anymore. Most of the contractors being used are now big business, and are almost completely out of the loop of their own operations - with the exception that they demand more for less, as they increase their overhead to make room for family and friends. The little guy doesn't have much of a shot at getting a prime contract anymore, so most of your face to face contractors... are actually sub-sub-sub contractors. They get paid barely enough to break even, and the techs would actually be better off going in-house and start at the bottom - which isnt an option for half. The solution is busting up these mega-contractors / HSP's, and creating competition through quality over quantity.