BT Add 150 Engineers in Scotland to Help Superfast Broadband Rollout

The company that works to maintain and upgrade BT’s national UK telecoms network, Openreach, has today announced the addition of another 150 new engineers to help deploy its latest superfast broadband (FTTC / FTTP) ISP services to people around Scotland.

BTOpenreach said it was taking on the new recruits in Inverness, Fort William, Oban, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Dumfries and Galashiels. The operator claims that around 90 of the new recruits, which are being offered an 18-month fixed term contract, will be stationed in the remote Highlands and Islands region to help with the £146m state-aid supported rollout there.

BT currently has over 6,000 telecoms engineers spread out around the United Kingdom (less than 2,500 of these are based in Scotland), which also includes the extra 1,000 announced earlier this year (here).

Brendan Dick, Director of BT Scotland, said:

“The advance of fibre broadband across Scotland is good news in more ways than one. Faster broadband will help to fuel local economies across rural and urban Scotland and the jobs we’re creating are part of that.

We’ve already had a great response for the posts in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Dumfries and Galashiels and now we’re very keen to hear from people in Inverness, Fort William, Oban and Aberdeen. We’re looking for dynamic, customer-focused people with a can-do attitude who’ll help build the network infrastructure and deliver fibre products and services into homes and offices in and around these towns and cities.

It’s skilled, interesting work which will give the successful recruits the chance to gain experience in a fast-paced, constantly evolving industry and be at the forefront of connecting communities to the future.”

Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister, said:

“Up to 150 new jobs is a welcome boost to the job market, presenting new business opportunities across the country.

These jobs come on the back of our recent announcement of a high speed broadband network, created in partnership with BT. This initiative will connect communities across rural and urban areas, providing a platform for future economic development and regeneration.

This is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the whole of Europe and will enable businesses to compete on the international stage.”

BT is currently spending £2.5 billion of its own money to make superfast broadband services available to 66% of the UK by spring 2014. Meanwhile Scotland’s own state aid supported / Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) effort with BT aims to extend the reach of its up to 80Mbps capable FTTC services to 85% of premises in Scotland by the end of 2015 and around 95% by the end of 2017.

At present around 650,000 Scottish homes and businesses can already get BT’s FTTC/P service and this should rise to 1.46 million through the operator’s commercial deployment. The publicly funded effort will naturally go beyond this.