Manchester-based ISP Telcom Group (Pioneer, ClearFibre and WeFibre), which is building a gigabit-capable “full fibre” broadband and Ethernet network across the North West of England and Midlands, has today – via its social initiative (Recode) – launched the new ‘Telecoms Engineer Bootcamp‘ to help train up and recruit new fibre engineers.
The operator, which recently secured a significant investment boost of £63m from Gresham House, claims to have “invested considerable resources” into securing experienced partners to support and deliver the intensive training program, designed to address the shortage of available talent in the sector with “no cost, no catch, tuition-free training“.
Successful applicants of Recode’s Telecoms Engineer Bootcamp will undertake a course led by experienced telecoms professionals, with successful graduates then being offered full time positions to work with seasoned veterans within Telcom Group – currently with over 100 open positions – or with a third-party partner. Graduates will also go on to receive further advanced training in specialist tasks such as overhead, surveys, splicing and more.
Shaun Gibson, CEO of Telcom Group, said:
“Today, the main issue facing all alt-nets across the UK is availability of skilled resources, with a particular emphasis upon telecommunications engineers. There are a limited number of engineers seeking opportunities and intense competition to hire those that are coming out of programmes such as CTTS.
This engineer resource constraint means that the industry at large will struggle to increase its output to such a level where it can hope to meet the Government’s gigabit coverage targets without initiatives like the Telecoms Engineer Bootcamp from Recode.”
The move is also partly intended to help reduce reliance on third-party contractors to carry out the infrastructure work, which Telcom claims can leave ISP projects “open to delays, spiralling costs and at times losing out mid-contract to projects that are better planned and/or better paid.”
The provider highlights the recent collapse of Complete Utilities, which impacted one of Gigaclear’s FTTP deployment projects, as well as the similarly recent announcement of NMCM going into administration, which hampered CityFibre in one of their locations (we’re still waiting a response from them on that one). “Ultimately the end-user pays the price through delays in accessing adequate broadband,” said Telcom.
£24k job with Telcom dependent on 4 weeks unpaid training.
Studying / re-training for a new line of work often costs a lot of money in course fees (e.g. https://fibreplus.co.uk/training/fibre-optics), so they’re offering that for free. But you’ll obviously be unpaid while studying (unless the training forms part of upskilling for your existing employment).
Other operators, like CityFibre, have very similar programmes. Alternatively, Openreach have some paid apprenticeship positions, for trainee engineers. So there are options, but local availability will be a factor, as will your own decisions about the best approach to take and the value of those qualifications.
The ‘training’ doesn’t even accredit you to work in the Openreach network which is essential in the wild west of PIA land.
They need to pay recruits whilst training and pay better rates if the want to fill 100 empty roles.
Just to clear it up –
The training is free, they have opening’s UK wide and if you travel from another part of the country they will put you up in the Premier Inn nearby for the whole month.
Yes you can get a job with Openreach – or one of the other 30 companies they offer places with – You get 4 weeks paid training and then if you don’t pass you get £500 if you do then you get a months wage which is £2000..
Source of this info – me.. I passed on the recent course. – the group for jan is full also now 🙂
Sorry I meant ” you get 4 weeks training”
Is this open to foreign applicants? With experience in splicing?