Broadband Development Conference
VP of Sales and Marketing
Steve Harris is the VP of Sales and Marketing at UCL Swift North America, where he serves as a premier architect of North American fiber infrastructure. With more than 30 years of experience—including a transformative tenure at Comcast and leadership roles within SCTE—he leads the go-to-market strategy for BABA-compliant, Texas-made connectivity solutions. A Cable Pioneer and patent holder, Steve is a globally recognized authority on "First-Time-Right" (FTR) fusion technology and workforce readiness, helping operators reduce friction and build reliable networks that outlast the competition.
Fiber networks, edge deployments, and data centers are converging faster than the workforce pipelines supporting it. Fiber technicians and data center technicians are increasingly working side by side, yet they’re being trained, credentialed, and hired as if they operate in entirely separate worlds. The result is a compounding labor shortage: not just a lack of workers, but a lack of workers who understand the full connectivity stack. This session will examine the emerging overlap between broadband infrastructure roles, the structural gaps in how the industry currently trains and classifies technicians, and the opportunity to solve both problems at once through cross-discipline, standardized training frameworks. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of where role convergence is already happening in the field, what standardized curriculum and credentialing could look like across disciplines, and how ISPs, data center operators, workforce development programs, and policymakers can collaborate to build more resilient talent pipelines.
