Openreach UK to Hire 3500 Trainee FTTP Engineers Over Next 12 Months

As first hinted in February (here), Openreach (BT) has today confirmed that they will hire 3,500 new trainee engineers over the next 12 months. The recruits are needed to help the operator deliver on its promise to make 1Gbps capable FTTP “full fibre” broadband available to 3 million premises by 2020.

The recruitment drive is said to be the “largest” single influx of new engineers in Openreach’s history and it will also result in a similar increase among the telecom operator’s supply chain, which when taken together should support the creation of around 5,000 new jobs in Britain over the coming year.

The related “Fibre First” programme will roll-out their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks in up to 40 towns, cities and boroughs. As previously announced (see link above), this build will commence in eight cities including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester.

Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:

“It’s great news that Openreach is creating 3,500 new permanent jobs rolling out full fibre broadband. This digital infrastructure will be welcomed by families and business across the country, and these new highly skilled jobs will be a boost to our talented workforce as we build an economy fit for the future.”

Clive Selley, Chief Executive of Openreach, added:

“These trainee engineers will be playing a vital role in the future success and prosperity of the UK. Over the last year our 22,200 engineers have been the driving force behind Government reaching its target of making ‘superfast’ broadband available to more than 95% of the country, whilst also improving our customer service performance – but we want to do more.

Every day, Openreach engineers are working in all weathers across the length and breadth of Britain, connecting homes and businesses and making sure people can access the high quality broadband services they need. We are already investing in upskilling our engineering team and today’s announcement of new jobs underlines our commitment to make our ‘Fibre First’ programme a reality – future-proofing Britain’s broadband network and supporting emerging mobile technologies like 5G.

I’m confident that our twin investment in people and infrastructure will help the UK achieve the societal and economic benefits that come from better, more reliable, faster broadband services.”

We suspect that FTTP isn’t the only reason why Openreach might need these extra engineers. Ofcom’s recent Strategic Review has also committed the operator to a variety of tougher service quality and performance targets (here), which could put an additional strain on their resources (extra engineers have already been hired to help cater for this but the more the merrier).

Openreach currently employs a total of 22,200 field engineers and last year hired more than 1,800 new engineers. No doubt some of the latest batch may also be used to support the roll-out of 330Mbps capable hybrid fibre G.fast broadband technology, which aims to cover 10 million UK premises by 2020.

The 3,500 roles include (across Openreach’s ten service delivery regions): 400 roles in Scotland; 297 in the North East (inc. Yorkshire & Humber); 283 in the North West; 303 in North Wales & the North Midlands; 444 in East Anglia; 354 in South Wales & the South Midlands; 300 in the South East, 505 in London; 400 in South Central and 214 in the South West.

As part of this Openreach also said that they would setup 12 new national fibre engineering schools, with centres in Bradford, Bolton, Cardiff, Croydon, Hertford, Livingston, Nursling, Peterborough, Thornaby and Yarnfield already live, and buildings in Exeter and the Thames Valley opening soon.