BT has announced that it’s recruiting more engineers in a bid to improve customer satisfaction.
Openreach, BT’s network arm, will add an extra 1,600 engineers to its team which will help it complete the various BDUK (Broadband Delivery for the UK) superfast fibre-based projects it’s working on, as well as general maintenance and repair.
Since it begun its own £2.5 billion network rollout and embarked on the first of the many BDUK projects, BT has connected 19 million homes and businesses to fibre-based broadband – either FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) or FTTP (Fibre to the Premises).
Joe Garner, CEO, Openreach, said “These new recruits will be a welcome boost to that effort, joining an already world class team. We want to attract the best in the country to a career in engineering.
“We are also keen to recruit women – as I’m keen to dispel the myth that being an engineer is an exclusively male vocation. In fact we have many successful women engineers and it is my personal belief that recruiting more will also help our customer service agenda.”
As part of the BDUK project, BT and the Government hope to connect 95 per cent of premises to superfast broadband (at least 25Mbps) by 2017.
The announcement of more jobs comes as telecoms regulator Ofcom looks over plans to fine Openreach if it fails to meet certain criteria.
Under the proposals, Openreach would have to fix customers phone and broadband services within two days of being notified by an ISP and install new lines within 12 working days.
Last December, BT said that it was already meeting these targets in most cases, compensating ISPs such as Sky and TalkTalk, if it was late with new installations.
BT has also announced today that from Summer 2014 onwards it will publish reports of its performance online, showing that the network is delivering against service targets.
Garner added: “Millions of customers depend on broadband and they rely on us to keep them connected, whatever the weather. Our engineers do an incredible job. They have been rolling out fibre broadband faster than anywhere else in the world, and at the same time completing hundreds of thousands of jobs each week to keep people connected throughout the UK – an amazing achievement.”
Homes and businesses keen to see if they can get fibre-based broadband from their nearest exchange can currently check the Where and When page of Openreach’s site.
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