Light Brigade announces fiber optic training milestone

August 4, 2008 – The Light Brigade, the world’s leading fiber optic training company, proudly announces that the company has reached a milestone of training more than 35,000 people around in the world in its public and customized classes.

Larry Johnson, founder and president of The Light Brigade, has been involved with fiber optics since 1977 when the first fiber optic system was installed in North America. In recent years he has been archiving the history of fiber optics. He reflects on the fiber optics industry over the last twenty years: “We have had so much fun since we started teaching fiber optics in 1987. Being a part of the fiber optics revolution has really been exciting. When you look back, you realize that we started at just the right time. From 1977 to 1985 the fiber industry had moved from basic innovations and field trials into what I call the ‘implementation’ phase.

“The next phase saw the development of the first fiber optic system standards. In 1987, SONET/SDH changed how service providers used fiber optics for communications. At the same time the new ANSI FDDI standard addressed multimode systems for LANs and laid the foundation for Ethernet, data centers, self-healing networks and defined system specifications. In the mid-1990s personal computers began to directly affect the communications industry, especially in long haul networks. This led to the real communications boom. Products had to perform at lower costs yet still offer magnitudes of improvement in bandwidth and speed. Many new IP-based companies were founded and new competitive local exchange carriers were started. They had great ideas and visions, but very little products and assets. While the bubble eventually burst, the technology itself never declined, nor did bandwidth use decrease.

“It was during these years that fiber optic training became key, for everyone from service providers to end users. This required that we pay close attention to new innovations, products, technologies and applications. This all started at the components level. The Light Brigade began to coordinate special events at the industry’s leading conferences and we took the knowledge we gained from these events and applied it to the content into our courses. In addition we started producing educational tools, such as videos, for those who wanted staff development tools for their internal training needs.

“Meanwhile, with the development of design and infrastructure standards such as TIA/EIA 568 and 569, products continued to evolve. Investment in fiber optics by end users increased, to the point that fiber optics became the chosen favorite for local area network installations. Growing demand for bandwidth from those who chose to work from home also provided an economic benefit to service providers. By 2004, new adaptations of the original visions to bring fiber to the home (FTTH) started to gain momentum. The standards written during the 1990s began to gain recognition and provided the push that FTTH needed, allowing low-cost products to be integrated into low-cost solutions.

“Looking back, our original vision statement for our Fiber Optics 1-2-3 class, which was written and developed in 1987, still holds true and we have been honest with it since.

This course is to provide the knowledge and skills for those who design, install, test and maintain fiber optics communications systems for voice, video, and data communications.

“We have continually researched technological developments, creating new content and updating our existing materials. We work in the field, investigating and testing new products and ideas, following any applicable standards, all in order to provide the most accurate, up-to-date information we can. We never cut corners on equipment, we always keep the focus on the technology, and we will continue to design our courses to best serve those who want to make informed decisions based on their own specific needs and applications.”

The Light Brigade’s training courses, which have been awarded a GSA contract from the United States government, cover the entire spectrum of fiber optics from basic theory, design, maintenance and testing through advanced topics such as FTTx, DWDM, SONET, fiber characterization, and fiber-optic video transmission. The Light Brigade has produced professional-quality educational DVDs (12 titles), videos and CDs (25 titles), a self-paced computerized training module, and two self-study courses. In addition, the company offers course development services in which courses can be customized to a desired skill level, to focus on specific subject matter, or to take place at a particular location.