AROUND 30 jobs will be created in Dorset as part of plans to boost an engineering workforce in the region and keep the county connected.

BT's Openreach division, which develops and maintains the UK's main telecoms network, wants to recruit 170 trainees in the South West including about 30 in Dorset, to help extend its fibre broadband network.

It is part of a UK-wide initiative to hire 1,500 trainee engineers over the next eight months. Openreach expects to recruit about 30 people in Dorset in locations such as Bournemouth, Poole, Dorchester and Blandford.

Potential candidates will be able to discover exactly what life as a field engineer involves, with the help of virtual reality (VR). The company is trialling a VR experience which enables interested applicants to don a headset and experience climbing a telephone pole or exploring the local exchange building in immersive 3D, from the perspective of a real engineer.

The 360 degree videos are available to watch on Openreach's YouTube channel. Videos include an engineer’s eye view from the top of a telephone pole, a virtual tour of a telephone exchange and a look inside a green roadside cabinet.

Nationally, it is expected that an initial intake of 119 recruits will join the company in April, followed by around 60 new recruits joining each week through to mid-October. New trainees will embark on a tailored 12 month accredited learning programme - including on-the-job experience and culminating with the attainment of an externally recognised qualification for IT, Software and Telecoms professionals.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley, said: "The Government's £1.7 billion rollout programme has helped take superfast broadband to more than nine out of ten homes and businesses in the UK and we are reaching thousands more every week. Openreach engineers have played a pivotal role in helping deliver this, and these 1,500 new recruits will be a fantastic addition to our thriving digital economy."

Openreach chief executive, Clive Selley, said: “Our customers need us to install new lines and repair our network faster than ever, and by increasing the number of people working on proactive network maintenance, we can fix more issues before people even notice them.

"We are also continuing to roll out superfast broadband services at scale and making big investments in our network to make ultrafast broadband available to up to 12 million homes by the end of 2020."