BT is creating hundreds of graduate jobs to help deliver one of the UK's biggest engineering projects

The recruitment drive comes as part of BT’s attempts to make super-fast fibre-optic broadband available to 95 per cent of UK homes within the next few years - one of the UK’s biggest engineering projects - but also to develop technology that provides internet access up to 13 times faster than is currently possible.

‘These new recruits will have the opportunity to work in fields such as technology research, engineering, IT and TV, helping to create and build the next generation of communications technologies for the UK,’ said BT chief executive Gavin Patterson in a statement.

The main part of the programme will involve deploying fibre-optic links across the parts of the UK not currently receiving super-fast broadband, creating particular network and systems engineering challenges in rural and remote areas

But BT is also planning two pilot tests of its new ultra-fast or “G.fast” broadband technology, devised at the company’s innovation centre at Adastral Park, Suffolk, that can provide internet speeds of up to 500Mbps (compared to the 76Mbps currently available).