BT praised for fibre broadband recruitment strategy

BT's plans to call on former members of the armed forces to assist with its fibre optic broadband rollout programme have been welcomed by a recruitment charity.

The telecoms giant has announced it will enlist around 200 ex-army, navy and air force personnel to join a mobile engineering workforce that will help to deploy super-fast broadband across the UK.

In order to recruit the right people for the job, BT has been working with the Career Transition Partnership, which provides guidance to former military staff.

David Duffy, managing director of the non-profit organisation, said: "We have had an amazing success rate with this project and have received tremendous feedback about the high calibre of the service leavers who have applied for the roles."

Plans to recruit the personnel came after BT revealed 156 more telephone exchanges will be enabled for fibre optic broadband by the end of 2012.

Of these, around 33 per cent are set to be hooked up to the technology this summer.