Top Telecoms Executive To Open New Super-fast Broadband Training Centre In Bodmin

One of the UK’s leading telecoms executives will be in Cornwall on Wednesday August 31 to officially open a new super-fast broadband training centre for engineers in Bodmin.

Liv Garfield, chief executive of BT’s local network business Openreach, is due to tour the new centre and to meet some of the company’s young new Cornish engineer apprentices.

The centre, based in the BT telephone exchange building in Crinnicks Hill, Bodmin, will initially provide training for more than 150 engineers over the next 12 months. They will join those already working on the pioneering £132 million Superfast Cornwall initiative which continues its ‘big build’ to roll out super-fast broadband across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Those attending the training include eight young people from Cornwall, aged 18 to 25, who are all in the early stages of two-year apprenticeships.

Liv Garfield said: “The Superfast Cornwall initiative presents a huge and exciting engineering challenge. More than 130,000 kilometres of optical fibre will be installed in the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly network and in the coming years engineers will be installing super-fast broadband in tens of thousands of local homes and businesses.

“It is vital that we have highly-skilled engineers supported by the very latest training. The people undergoing the super-fast broadband training are a mixture of experienced engineers, new recruits and young apprentices.

“We have people undertaking training with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience and there is a universal enthusiasm for delivering this new technology to the highest possible standards. What they have in common is the recognition that this initiative offers a huge opportunity for boosting the future prosperity of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.”

Nigel Ashcroft, Superfast Cornwall programme director for Cornwall Development Company, which is managing the £1321 million private and public sector partnership, said: “I am delighted that Superfast Cornwall is not only delivering a big boost to the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly economy, but also helping build a local, highly-skilled engineering workforce. It is particularly heartening to see the apprenticeships being offered to young Cornish people during these difficult economic times. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to develop an engineering career with a technology geared to the future.”

The eight apprentices were selected earlier this year from many hundreds who applied on-line.

The Bodmin training centre contains a variety of demonstration equipment, including full size green cabinets of the type being installed in Cornish streets to provide super-fast broadband, optical fibre, routers and modems. The engineers will be using their skills to install super-fast broadband at homes and businesses and to develop and maintain the new fibre optic network.

One of the apprentices, James Miners, aged 24, a former broadcast journalist for BBC Radio Cornwall who lives in Newquay, said: “Becoming an engineering apprentice is a fantastic career opportunity and it’s great to be working on the first steps of the next generation network for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It’s a very important development for this area.”

Superfast Cornwall, a partnership between BT, the European Convergence Programme, Cornwall Council and Cornwall Development Company, expects to make super-fast fibre-based broadband available to 80 - 90 per cent of homes and businesses in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by the end of 2014. Alternative technologies, such as wireless and satellite, will be used to boost speeds in those areas where the roll-out of a super-fast fibre- based broadband service will not be technically or economically viable.