In a nationwide recruitment drive which will be part of British telco BT's £2.5 billion investment in its broadband network, the company will hire over 1,000 engineers at its Openreach network business.

In a statement pertaining to the recruitment of new engineers, BT said that, for filling the more than 1,000 engineering jobs that it is creating, it will be hiring nearly 400 apprentices, ex-squaddies, and some long-term jobless people.

The new engineers who will be recruited by BT will chiefly be installing fibre broadband in customers' homes and businesses; thereby bringing high-speed fibre Internet connections to street-side junction boxes, homes and businesses in Britain.

According to the new recruitment related details shared by BT, once the company hires more than 1,000 engineers, it will have a total of 6,000 engineers employed for the project overseen by its Openreach unit. The company recently hinted that it had surpassed rival Virgin Media by hooking up at least 13 million Britain premises to its fibre network.

Meanwhile, with the government keen on having broadband coverage in place before Britain heads for polls, Prime Minister David Cameron said about BT's recruitment announcement: "Working with business, the government is driving a transformation in UK broadband services and with an extra 100,000 homes and businesses gaining super-fast broadband availability each week, this is already taking shape."