BT calls on ex-troops for fibre roll-out
EX-servicemen and women from around Greater Manchester have been recruited by BT to help deliver superfast business broadband across the UK.
BT’s local network business, Openreach, plans to employ 200 former armed forces men and women from many parts of the country, with around 30 coming from Greater Manchester.
The recruits are due to start their new jobs later this month. They will be part of a mobile engineering workforce which will help to deploy superfast fibre broadband to homes and businesses across the UK.
BT said its deployment of fibre broadband is one of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects with the technology being delivered at much faster speed than in other countries.
It expects two thirds of UK premises to have access by the end of 2015 with close to 3,000 full time engineers working on the project.
Openreach has been working with the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), an arrangement between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Right Management, a global recruitment firm. The CTP provides career guidance along with training and employment support to those leaving the armed forces.
Openreach’s chief executive Olivia Garfield said: “It’s fantastic that we’ve been able to recruit so many ex-armed services personnel. These people have served their country well and so deserve the chance of full-time employment with a generous reward package. They are highly skilled, motivated and disciplined and have experience of complex engineering tasks in challenging environments.”
