BTOpenreach Recruit 400 Engineers to Boost UK Superfast Broadband Rollout

BTOpenreach, which is responsible for managing access to and building BT’s national UK telecoms network, has announced plans to recruit 400 new engineers. The new staff will hopefully help to tackle delayed installations and boost the roll-out of its superfast broadband (e.g. FTTC) ISP services.

In a statement BTOpenreach confirmed that most of the new engineers were expected to be ex-armed forces personnel, which mirrors the 500 or so new workers that were drafted in last year to help deliver on its £2.5bn investment. The move means that BTO has added almost 1,700 new engineers since March 2011 and should now have a total of over 3,500.

Olivia Garfield, BTOpenreachs CEO, said:

“I’m delighted to be able to recruit these extra engineers. Our engineers are doing a fantastic job keeping the copper network in shape, as well as deploying fibre at breakneck speed, and the new recruits will help us go even further, faster.”

As before the new personnel will become part of a mobile engineering workforce that “can be deployed anywhere in the UK“, which hopefully won’t have too much of an impact upon their family lives; but then ex-military folk tend to be use to that (i.e. probably BT’s thinking).

BT expects to have pushed its superfast broadband out to around 66% of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2014, which could rise to 90% by 2016/17 if it wins the lion’s share of the governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) subsidy (still dependent upon final EC approval). So far the service is able to pass 11 million premises (about 40% of the country) and rising.

Meanwhile many new service installations are currently suffering from long delays, which is partly as a result of recent weather conditions and the slowdown caused by suspension of work during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Engineers now increasingly find their time being split between general maintenance tasks and the roll-out of new services. Hopefully the new personnel will help to ease this strain.