Fresh out of high school, Nick Hoh needed work, and he needed benefits. He sent out a wave of applications to what he knew were considered good union jobs — from firefighting to construction. Of all the submissions he sent out, the phone company was the first to call.
“I started early, right out of high school instead of going to college,” he told us. “I didn’t really go looking to be a phone man. It kind of found me and things fell into place.”
Quickly moving beyond just phones, Hoh has now made a multi-decade career in broadband working as an in-home fiber installation and repair technician. When he first landed in the industry, he'd just had his first son, so medical benefits were indispensable — but he found that the career support didn’t stop there.
"Over the years, I've gotten a college education for free,” he said, referencing the $8,000 yearly tuition assistance he receives at his job, which is unionized through the Communication Workers of America (CWA).
“I’ve been able to raise a family and have time off to take vacations and enjoy my family. So, it’s more than just a paycheck.”
Beyond the way the work has supported him, he has also found it a fulfilling way to help other communities.
“I’ve been through a couple hurricanes, a pandemic, and that’s when it means a lot to customers. I go to work every day, and I am making a difference. I’m connecting people who lost the connection or need it desperately,” he explained. “They're so appreciative, you know, when you're there and things are kind of falling apart, like in the middle of a storm.”
Learning the ropes (or cables)
Like many beginners in broadband, when Hoh first got started, everything was new.
“I was very young. I knew nothing, and I really knew nothing,” he said laughing. But where Hoh really considers himself lucky was with the on-the-job mentorship he found — and the way they were set on teaching him more than their own way of doing things.
“I had some really good old timers on the job that kind of took me under their wing. What I learned was exactly how it should be. And then you could figure it out from there, you could figure out your own shortcuts, but here’s by the book,” he detailed.
Learning on the job is expected, but if there isn’t a balance of traditional learning — be it through certifications or employer training — it can lead to developing bad habits that will inevitably cause problems down the line.
“If you’re learning shortcuts to begin with, you’re really doing yourself a disservice. Then you’re gonna have to unlearn something,” Hoh explained. “Because there’s a lot of ways to get things working. Whether it stays working for a week or a month after you leave, that’s the other thing. Best to know more by the book than less.”
Molding a method
Decades into working with fiber, Hoh has developed his own method to making sure things are done right. And from his perspective, it’s always best to game plan the installation process to avoid working yourself into corners.
“The way I approach things, I think it’s important for me to separate things. I have to think first, get my plan, look at everything, take my time,” he described. "Look at the lines on the house: where am I gonna hide the wire? How’s it going to run? If I can’t hide it, how do I run it to make it look neat?”
That last piece is important, as Hoh explained many customers don’t realize that having wireless connection still means getting wired up to some extent.
“Everyone thinks of wireless, but anything that is transmitting that wireless signal has to be wired. Every cell tower is wired to a pole, every router is wired to something," he elaborated. "Knowing how to run wire and do it neatly — hiding it in plain sight so it doesn’t look like somebody just threw a box of wire on the side of the house — that really would be super beneficial."
While installation is typically more physical work, repairs can often be more technically challenging tasks. Repairs begin with troubleshooting, and that means figuring out what the installer may have done wrong, or it may mean finding faulty tech.
“A lot of times, it could be an old piece of wire from 1986 that’s still working in the house that finally went, and I gotta go find it,” he said.
Hoh chuckled as he noted that with residential customers, troubleshooting may include undoing whatever customers have already attempted themselves.
Besides working in cold rain (which he'd sub for three feet of snow any day), Hoh enjoys the day-to-day of the job and the way it varies. “It’s different every day. You know, there’s a lot of the same, right? But every house is different, every customer is different, the terminal is in different places.”
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