South Dakota SmartWire electrical contractors, and the men and women who work for them, have been electrifying the Dakotas and Minnesota for more than 93 years. And now, we're right in the forefront of the electrical industry's most demanding technologies: voice/data transmission, fiber optic cabling, and network applications.

The Dakotas Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC) provides an apprenticeship program that's nationally recognized and accredited by the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training (BAT).  It's 8,000 hours of on-the-job training for each apprentice, along with five years of classroom instruction. That's learning by doing, backed up by classroom theory, and it covers residential, commercial and industrial electrical construction and telecommunications.

As technology changes so too does the training we offer. No training program anywhere compares with the Telecommunications Installer/Technician Apprenticeship program established by South Dakota SmartWire through our Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee.

We provide training in a real-work environment that includes:

• five years of related classroom training, with 180 contact hours per year, for a total of 900 hours of related technical training.
• five years of on-the-job training under the direction and supervision of qualified installers and technicians.

Without question, the best trained and most experienced apprentice installers and technicians are employed by South Dakota SmartWire electrical contractors and trained through our apprenticeship program. We've partnered with the nation's largest and most recognized manufacturers in the telecommunications industry to ensure state-of-the-art training and to keep us at the leading edge of technology.