Telco keeps worrying about a skills shortage. But a group of Solent University students just reminded me that the talent is still there. We just need to give them problems worth solving.
That’s why I wanted to take a moment to congratulate the Solent University team that recently developed an automated network prediction pipeline. Their project was designed to reduce some of the problems ISPs face during network planning. The application allows users to import OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, combine it with the UK’s Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) data, and generate a telecommunications network that links houses to poles and cabinets. Even better, the output was designed to be exported into Kuwaiba, the open-source network inventory system that we use in our OSS Sandpit environment.
That’s certainly not a trivial student exercise. It touches real industry problems – data quality (especially address data), geospatial modelling, network design, rule-based prediction, inventory creation and OSS integration.
It also deserves recognition because of the assignment itself. Congratulations to Craig Gallen for creating a project that was worth working on. Not just academically interesting. Not just technically challenging. But meaningful in a way that connects students to the problems our industry actually faces.
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It’s easy for the telco industry to talk itself into gloom about “the skills cliff.” We worry about ageing expertise, retiring specialists, fewer people choosing telecoms careers and the more charismatic pull of AI, cloud, cyber, fintech and start-ups.
But this project is a useful reminder that capable builders are still out there. Give students a tangible problem, a credible technical stack and a reason to care, and they can engage deeply with telco.
The Solent team didn’t just produce a basic diagram or a report.
They built a prototype around real planning logic. They worked with flawed source data, network rules and built for visualisation in a GIS and network inventory. That’s exactly the kind of opportunity and exposure that can turn an unfamiliar industry into a possible career path.
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One of the reasons I like this project is that it shows network planning for what it really is. It is not just about drawing routes on a map. It is a data problem, an automation problem, a series of IT problems and a network data modelling problem (ie an OSS problem).
The students designed a PostGIS pipeline to clean OpenStreetMap data and spatially match it with UPRN data. That alone exposes them to one of the least glamorous but vitally important challenges in OSS/BSS – messy address data costs the industry millions every year, whilst being the foundation for almost every elegant-looking operational process and solution.
They then used Java and Spring Boot to apply predictive logic based on buildings, roads and network rules. That takes the project from static mapping into modelled decision-making. Then, by converting the network into a format that could be imported into Kuwaiba, they connected the exercise to inventory – one of the foundational domains of OSS (and my favourite domain!).
That combination matters more than most realise. Maybe it’s just because I’m a visual learner, but IMHO, data collection and cleaning without a method for visualisation (GIS and inventory in this case), ideally spatial visualisation, can feel incomplete. It needs the visualisation to feel immersive and truly understand what’s happening.
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A recent PAOSS article asked what trees we should plant for the next 10,000 OSS/BSS practitioners. It discussed the barriers new starters face – terminology, lack of access to real systems, and lack of realistic use-cases and datasets.
This Solent assignment feels significant enough to be one of those trees.
Craig Gallen created a challenge that gave students a realistic use-case, accessible data sources, a practical toolchain and a clear OSS-based outcome. Instead of asking students to learn telecoms through definitions alone, the assignment let them discover the industry through building.
That’s how OSS becomes less invisible. Students don’t need to start by memorising every acronym across inventory, assurance, fulfilment, orchestration and activation. They can start by asking a practical, and often intuitive question: how do we connect this house to this network in a way that an inventory system can understand?
The curiosity involved in asking that type of question opens the door to everything else. The best OSS/BSS practitioners I know are all intensely curious. They want to know how everything works and interconnects.
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Another recent PAOSS article asked whether telco is facing a skills shortage or a prestige shortage. That question reframes the problem. It’s not that the industry needs more people. The issue is that we’ve stopped making telco feel like an obvious destination for our most brilliant young minds.
Projects like this help change that story.
Prestige is not created from rah-rah by simply saying, “telecoms is important.” Prestige is created when people experience the importance for themselves. When students get a real line-of-sight towards network planning that affects real communities, services, costs and operational outcomes, the industry becomes more tangible and compelling.
A network prediction pipeline might not sound glamorous at first. But look closer and it contains many of the themes that should attract curious technologists – complex algorithms, geospatial data, automation, infrastructure modelling, digital twins, network / engineering rules and practical data integrity.
Don’t you think this is a much better story than “come and maintain legacy systems?” Instead it says, “come and help improve the infrastructure the modern world depends on.”
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It would be easy to applaud this project and move on. But that would miss the bigger opportunity.
Some members of this student team are now looking for work. They’ve already worked on a challenging, multi-threaded problem that many people inside the industry would recognise immediately. Do you have the next seed for them to plant, water and nurture? If you do, please leave me a note.
The broader call-to-action is for our industry to create more assignments like this. Real, meaningful challenges that students can attack with open data, open-source tools and mentoring from people who understand the operational context.
Congratulations to the Solent University students for building something that deserves attention. Congratulations also to Craig Gallen for planting a tree worth growing.
Now the challenge for the rest of the industry is simple: plant more of them, and help the students find their next step into telco careers.
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