The channel’s Women in Technology agenda has hit an inflection point where heightened awareness must be converted into tangible progress – and men need to play their part.
Tue, 19/04/2022 - 09:25
After registering 50% growth over the last two years, Mills Ltd must negotiate skills shortages and supply chain issues to achieve its ambitious 2022 targets, according to CEO Jerry Mills.
According to Mills, the company’s directive is to maintain its position in the UK marketplace and ensure it has enough stock and resource to support its customers’ network builds despite the lingering effects of Brexit and the Covid pandemic.
He said: “Many of the local authorities and wayleave issues are now resolved and PIA protocols are more widely understood, meaning that the biggest delay to the rollout is set to be caused by material and labour shortages.”
The UK is seeing a shortage of fibre, ducting and associated infrastructure equipment alongside increased costs and delays to shipping of materials from the far east. Energy costs are also causing pricings to be reviewed monthly.
Labour shortages have also become a key struggle but Mills highlights the merits of re-training existing utility and construction staff into the industry. “It is not that difficult as most of the technical jobs such as fusion splicing and fibre testing have become massively deskilled,” he said.
“I really enjoy investing in our staff and helping them to grow their careers through Mills. I am very proud of our Investors In People Platinum Accreditation.”
Jerry Mills took over the family-owned business in 2001 and has since masterminded the company’s transition into a distributor of fibre infrastructure products, tools and equipment to the UK’s altnet sector.
“We have embraced the boom in the UK altnet industry over recent years and it has led to staggering growth,” said Mills. “This has been spurred mostly by our physical infrastructure access (PIA) range and the growth of altnets who use our equipment to build their end-to-end fibre networks.”
Mills collaborates with altnets to create and develop PIA products. Many PIA used today lines are old legacy BT items, for copper networks, some dating back to the 50’s and 60’s.
“In association with altnets and contractors we have introduced many new tools and infrastructure products to improve installation times and provide efficiencies to the build partners,” said Mills. “This is an ongoing and exciting part of the business and I believe contractors/ advisers/ suppliers in UK altnet community see us more than just a distributor due to the benefits of the new innovative products we have introduced over the past three years.”
An example of this is Mills’ new F.I.G fibre installation gun designed in conjunction with Virgin Media to provide a quick and efficient way to deliver a fibre cable through micro ducting to the premise.
“We’re currently working with manufacturing companies to help them with easier and less evasive ways of installing duct, most specifically around narrow trenching and trenchless technologies,” said Mills. “We also have a number of new lines in development to assist in the installation and testing of fibre.”
Mills is a proprietor of collaboration within the industry to increase efficiencies for customers and suppliers. This is a driving factor for the annual Mills roadshow which brings together ISPs, build partners, local authorities and trade associations to be given an engineering perspective on the UK's full fibre rollout and ensure everyone is on the same page.
Mills said: “It would be beneficial if all the altnets all used the same network designs and splitter configurations, especially over time when altnets begin to be acquired by the big boys, similar to the consolidation in cable TV during the ‘90s.”
