Openreach chief executive Clive Selley last week announced a £400,000 investment in a fibre training school for Scotland to educate a new generation of digital engineers.
More than 4,000 people have applied for 400 new trainee engineering roles being created in Scotland by the digital network business as it gears up for a major rollout of ultrafast broadband.
The new recruits will be among the first pupils to pass through the new fibre training school, located within Openreach’s national training centre for Scotland in Livingston, with around 40 being hired to work directly on the rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) in Edinburgh.
The Scottish capital will be the first city in Scotland to see widespread rollout of FTTP at speeds up to 1Gbps. Work is under way in parts of the city including Corstorphine and Newington, with places like Murrayfield, Abbeyhill and western Dalry expected to follow.
Engineers who pass through the fibre training school will receive comprehensive training – from picking up a job and setting up their working area safely to splicing together hair-breadth fibres or installing or repairing a line.
Around 1,700 trainees are expected to pass through the doors in Livingston throughout 2018/19, with numbers rising once work completes on the fibre school later this year.
Openreach expects to announce more locations to be upgraded to ultrafast FTTP during the course of this year.
