“We’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off,” says Jason Jolly, chief executive of Fiberscope LLC, a Sullivan, Mo.-based company that does contracted fiber-splicing work. Cellphone companies could help by providing wireless internet service to more homes, and they could benefit from the new subsidies. The Fiber Broadband Association, an industry group promoting network expansion, estimates that more than 205,000 additional workers will be needed through 2026. Other estimates for how many more fiber workers will be needed this decade have run as high as 850,000. The company now does about 25% of its fiber-splicing work in-house, he says, whereas nearly all of it was done by contractors before last year.

Source: Wall Street Journal April 23, 2023 12:53 UTC