Bracknell constituency has today bucked the prevailing economic trend by having five new locally-based engineering jobs created by Openreach, to be filled during 2021.
The new roles, located in the local community and surrounding areas, will enable Openreach to continue improving service levels whilst building and connecting customers to its new, Ultrafast Full Fibre broadband network at a record pace.
MP for Bracknell, James Sunderland said: “This is welcome news for local residents. Not only are we on course to see the build of a full fibre network in the Bracknell area, we are also going to see cleaner energy vehicles helping to improve air quality, all while local people will be able to access new employment opportunities. This is a huge boost for the local economy and all part of the recovery that we need to see starting for 2021.”
Openreach CEO, Clive Selley, said: ““As a major employer and infrastructure builder, we believe Openreach can play a leading role in helping the UK to build back better and greener. Our Full Fibre network build is going faster than ever and we’re now looking for thousands more people to build a career with Openreach and help us upgrade broadband connections and continue improving service levels. We’re also investing in our supply chain, which will support the creation of thousands of jobs based all over the UK.
“We know the network we’re building can deliver a host of green benefits – from consuming less power to enabling more home working and fewer commuting trips - and we’re going to take that a step further, by committing to build and maintain that network using state of the art electric vehicles across our 27,000-strong fleet. We’ll have completely transitioned to EVs by 2030.”
More than 3.5 million premises can now order a gigabit capable Full Fibre broadband service from a range of competing service providers using Openreach’s new network, and the company is on track to reach its target of upgrading 20 million homes and businesses by the mid-to-late 2020s*.
As a result of the pandemic, with full fibre nearly 2 million more people than previously estimated could also choose to work remotely from home over the long term, reducing transport and housing pressures in big cities and boosting local and rural economies across the country. Updated research, also published today, by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) suggests that a nationwide Full Fibre broadband network would boost UK productivity by £59 billion by 2025 and enable nearly 1 million (c.950,000) more people to access employment including over 300,000 carers, nearly 250,000 older workers and 400,000 parents.