The story for BT over recent months has been a somewhat worrying one to follow. The company has faced a great deal of controversy surrounding its battle with Ofcom, culminating in the “legal separation” of the network access division which took place last month. These developments have also brought about a process that will mean Openreach will be hiring a further 1,500 UK broadband and telecom engineers to help them improve their service performance and quality.
Of course, the company doesn’t expect to get their hands on all of these new experts at once. The new recruitment drive is expected to continue over the next eight months or so, following many similar announcements from the BT consumer and mobile division. Right now, the entire BT group hires approximately 80,000 people throughout the United Kingdom, with about 32,000 of those staff soon seeing a transfer into the completely separate division of Openreach.
A New Future for BT and OpenReach
There’s been a lot of confusion surrounding the issues connecting BT and Openreach over the last few months, but it appears that progress is beginning to be made, at least according to the standards and requirements that Ofcom have set in place. The related “Strategic Review” from the customer service company has also outlined an intention to start introducing more stringent minimum service requirements for quality. This promise should push Openreach into making more efforts when installing new lines and repairing faults quickly and effectively.
Additionally, the upcoming roll-out of Openreach’s commercial “G Fast” broadband technology, combined with their efforts to ramp up FTTP deployment may also benefit from having additional experts on board. After all, getting faster internet out to the masses will probably require more man power than the company currently has.
According to Clive Selley, the CEO of Openreach, the expectation is that most of the new recruits being hired in the current months will be able to find jobs within network maintenance teams. This greater number of staff should help to limit fault rates and improve internet services overall.
A Boost to Services for All
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen major companies make moves like this to improve customer service, and Openreach appears to constantly make efforts to stay ahead of the targets that Ofcom sets for performance.
The latest move to enhance services for consumers will begin soon after the new “Wholesale local Market Review” for 2017. This review will help the company to re-examine the price that should be allocated for superfast broadband on a wholesale level. Additionally, it should help to define what the next batch of targets regarding performance should be for OpenReach. With some luck, the new recruitment drive should be the solution for Openreach when it comes to staying ahead of the expectations that may be set for them in the future.
