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460 new jobs in our part of the country, laying cable nobody will ever see

Qurexa Editorial Team27 September 20266 min read 0 0
460 new jobs in our part of the country, laying cable nobody will ever see

What happened

On 25 September 2026, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the government's broadband rollout has created more than 3,000 jobs and apprenticeships in England. The programme is called Project Gigabit. Its job is to bring fast broadband to the places commercial companies were never going to reach on their own — villages, hamlets, farms and isolated houses where digging a trench costs far more per home than it does in a town. Of those 3,000-plus roles, 460 were created in the East Midlands and in Yorkshire and the Humber. That is our part of the country. The roles are not desk jobs. They include fibre engineers, technicians, network planners, project managers and support staff. Across the UK, government gigabit programmes have now upgraded 1.46 million premises. Ian Murray, the minister responsible for telecoms, said: 'Behind every new broadband connection are engineers, apprentices and local teams learning the skills to give communities the fast, reliable connections they need.' The announcement includes one specific example. Mohammed Ameen started an apprenticeship in October 2024 and within six months had a permanent job as a fibre installation engineer at Quickline, working across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

Why this matters

There are two reasons to pay attention to this, and one of them is not about broadband at all. The first is the obvious one. In rural Lincolnshire, a slow connection is not a minor irritation. It decides whether you can have a video appointment with your GP instead of a forty-minute drive. It decides whether a pharmacy's ordering system works reliably. It decides whether a young person can do a college course from home, or whether an older person can see their grandchildren on a screen. The NHS is steadily moving more services online — appointments, repeat prescriptions, test results, remote monitoring for long-term conditions. Every one of those improvements quietly assumes you have a connection that works. For the households at the end of a long line, that assumption has not held. The second reason is jobs. 460 roles in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber is a real number in a region where skilled, permanent, non-graduate jobs are not abundant. Fibre engineering is a trade. It travels. Once you can splice fibre and read a network plan, that skill does not stop being useful when one contract ends. Mohammed Ameen's route — apprenticeship in October 2024, permanent engineering job within six months — is the kind of path that is worth knowing exists.

What the evidence actually says

It is worth separating the solid figures from the framing. The firm numbers in the announcement are these: more than 3,000 jobs and apprenticeships created in England; 460 of them in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber; and 1.46 million premises upgraded across the UK through government gigabit programmes. A few honest caveats. 'Premises upgraded' means a property can now order a gigabit-capable connection. It does not mean the household has taken one, or that they can afford one. Availability and take-up are different things, and the gap between them is where digital exclusion actually lives. 'Jobs and apprenticeships created' is a figure supplied by a government programme about its own performance. That does not make it wrong, but it is a self-reported number, and some of those roles will be contract work tied to the build rather than permanent posts. And Project Gigabit is deliberately targeted at the hardest and most expensive places. That means progress there will always look slow next to commercial rollouts in cities. Judging it against urban speeds misses the point of the programme. What is not in doubt is the direction. The build is happening, and it is happening in places that were previously last in the queue.

Qurexa perspective

We are based in Lincolnshire and we deliver across it, so we see the geography this programme is dealing with every single day. A lot of our work exists precisely because distance is a real barrier here. Villages with no pharmacy. Bus services that do not fit around a hospital appointment. Farms where the nearest chemist is a twenty-minute drive and the nearest one open on a Sunday is further still. Better broadband and prescription delivery solve the same underlying problem from two directions. One removes the need to travel for information and appointments. The other removes the need to travel for the medicine itself. Neither replaces seeing a person when you need to see a person. We mention it because the 460 figure will be read in a lot of places as a line in a press release. Here, it is cable going into ground we drive over.

Practical advice

1. Check what is actually available at your address. Do not assume nothing has changed — rollouts happen quietly. Ofcom's broadband checker and Project Gigabit's own postcode checker will both tell you what your address can now get. 2. If a gigabit connection is available, you do not have to buy the fastest package. For most households, a mid-range fibre package is far more than enough and the price difference is real. Speed is not the same as reliability, and reliability is usually what people actually want. 3. If cost is the barrier, ask about social tariffs. Most major providers offer cheaper broadband packages for people receiving Universal Credit, Pension Credit and some other benefits. They are not well advertised. You usually have to ask. 4. If you have a long-term condition and your surgery offers video appointments, a working connection is worth sorting out for that reason alone. It saves journeys you would otherwise have to make. 5. If you are 16 to 24, or looking to retrain, look at fibre engineering apprenticeships in the region. Quickline and other regional providers recruit locally. This is a trade with a shortage of people, which is the best condition to enter one in. 6. Help an older neighbour check their options. Take-up, not availability, is the real gap — and the people least likely to switch are often the ones who would benefit most.

What to know

Project Gigabit has created more than 3,000 jobs and apprenticeships in England, 460 of them in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber, and government gigabit programmes have now upgraded 1.46 million premises across the UK. For rural Lincolnshire, that is more consequential than it sounds. Online GP appointments, repeat prescriptions, test results and remote monitoring all assume a connection that works, and for households at the end of a long line that assumption has not held. Two things are worth doing. Check what is actually available at your address, because it may have changed without anybody telling you. And if cost is the barrier, ask your provider about a social tariff — they exist, and they are rarely offered unprompted. If you are looking for a trade rather than a desk, fibre engineering in this region is currently short of people. Sources: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 'Government-backed broadband rollout plugs thousands into skilled jobs and apprenticeships', 25 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-backed-broadband-rollout-plugs-thousands-into-skilled-jobs-and-apprenticeships ; Building Digital UK, 'Project Gigabit', https://www.gov.uk/guidance/project-gigabit-uk-gigabit-programme ; Ofcom, 'Broadband and mobile checker', https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/ This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional.

#Project Gigabit#broadband#Lincolnshire#apprenticeships#rural#digital inclusion

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