With the announcements that Google Fiber plans to expand its networks in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City and San Antonio. With possible expansions in Portland, San Jose and Phoenix (the Phoenix City Council has unanimously approved the licensing agreement with Google on September 2, 2015) brings with it new opportunities and testing challenges.
Relying on the existing job knowledge or technical skills to succeed is a trap that companies need to be wary of. It is essential to take the time to develop a good knowledge base and set of technical skills to ensure success.
For companies that are bidding on or are planning to work on Google Fiber (or for that fact on any new PON projects) there are some recommended training requirements broken down by job function.
Technicians:
- Basic fiber
- Fiber handling
- Basic fiber testing
- Basic PON
- Connector inspection and cleaning
Equipment: PON power meters, power meters, light source, VFL, connector inspection probes
Team leads:
- Advanced fiber
- Advanced fiber testing
- Intermediate PON
- Field loss calculations
- Advanced OTDR
- OTDR trace analysis
- Trouble isolation and resolution
- Report generation
Equipment: PON power meters, power meters, light source, VFL, connector inspection probes, OTDR, Optical Loss Test Set (OLTS), Result analysis software
Project managers:
Project Managers are often overlooked for technical training because they are primarily viewed as administrative.
It is however extremely helpful to the project management function to give the project manager the same technical training as technicians at a minimum and optimally the same as team leads. The better their understanding of the network and the challenges behind the installation will give the project manager an increased ability to address any issues that may arise thereby allowing for better resource, budget and time management.
As with any fiber project there are multiple ways to accomplish an installation, with PON the engineer may choose to deploy connectorized splitters, splice in splitters, cascaded splitters, dedicated counts, connectorized drops at the workout terminal or fusion spliced and the list goes on and on.
The better your core team understands the various topologies, how the network is put together, test access points and what test or suite of tests to conduct from those locations the better they will be at responding to and resolving any issues that may arise.
Also important is to consider is that each network design has its weak points, understanding where these weak points are and the associated issues that may arise at each, empowers the field team and instills the confidence to quickly resolve any possible defects.
VanTek Consulting is here to help your team’s success through onsite and remote training, site visits and audits, collaborative field training and process development.
Call VanTek Consulting today to discuss how we can help you prepare for your success.
