TELECOMS infrastructure firm Openreach has launched a £485,000 national training centre in Livingston as it expects to deploy thousands of skilled engineers upgrading networks in Scotland in coming years.
The new centre has been designed to help equip engineers with the skills they will need to work on the roll out of the latest ultra-fast broadband technology in Scotland.
Katie Milligan, a Scot who is part of the executive team at Openreach, said the training centre is expected to play a key role in helping the BT subsidiary to continue to play its part in the development of the country’s communication systems.
While there have been repeated complaints about broadband provision in Scotland, Openreach reckons more than 95 per cent of Scottish homes can already access fibre broadband services, with the vast majority benefiting from super-fast links.
There is more work to do on the super-fast front but Openreach is gearing up for the challenge that will be posed by the move to the next generation of ultra-fast technology.
With the UK Government wanting to have 15 million homes benefiting from ultra-fast links by 2025, Openreach wants to ensure it has the people and skills required to roll out thousands of miles of full fibre networks.
Ms Milligan said the new centre will train 220 people who have ben recruited to fill new trainee engineering roles at the firm, in a programme that will lead to them having good, high-skilled jobs,
More than 2,000 engineers from across Scotland are expected to train at the centre this year.
She highlighted the innovative nature of the centre, which aims to prepare engineers to meet the huge range of challenges they are likely to face working in Scotland.
“This is transformational, it’s trying to recreate every type of environment that engineers will come across,” said Ms Milligan.
The centre will feature a 18,700 square foot replica street Openreach said it had built from scratch to recreate the live network in the real world.
It said the centre will have “an extra dose of reality added by exposure to the elements and factors specific to Scotland, such as an inaccessible telegraph pole tucked away in a back garden”.
Openreach noted that 4,000 people had applied for the trainee positions.
After taking on 400 people last year the company has 3,200 staff supporting broadband networks in Scotland.
Openreach is working with further education establishments such as West Lothian College to encourage interest in telecoms engineering.
Ms Milligan said she thought around two thirds of the full fibre network upgrade in the UK could be completed by firms such as Openreach making commercial investments. The development of the remaining third could require some form of public funding.
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