The mobile phone boom has helped BT create more than two hundred jobs at its Bradford call centre.

Some 240 customer care workers are to be taken on at the BT Mobile call centre in Manchester Road over the next two years.

The firm, which employs 120 staff at its Manchester Road Telephone Exchange, plans to take on an extra 90 staff next month and a further 150 customer care employees in March 2000.

The mobile phone industry has grown over the last few years which could allow BT Mobile to create even more jobs.

Bradford is becoming the call centre city of the North with more than 4,000 people employed in call centre work in the city. By 2002 that figure is set to rise to more than 6,000 with jobs in the financial services sector, such as with Abbey National and NatWest Bank and mail order firms such as Grattan.

BT Mobile uses Bradford Council's Call Centre to train its staff with a five-week course, then gives them further specialist BT training.

There are also plans to create extra jobs at the BT Mobile offices in Leeds which currently employ 450 staff.

The customer care centre was opened last year in the building, which was the city's main telephone exchange and employed hundreds of people for many years.

Empty space in the building allows the rapid expansion of the customer care service to BT Mobile customers. BT Mobile operates the Cellnet mobile phone business which is jointly owned by BT and Securicor.

Anne Crowther, BT's regional media relations manager, said today: "Over the next five years the number of people using mobile phones is set to double from the current nine million which would allow BT Mobile to take on extra staff.

"The mobile phone industry has grown and developed over the past ten years. The original heavy-weight analogue mobile phones have mainly been replaced by lighter and better digital phones. The third wave of mobile phones will allow the handset to be used as an office - giving the user the ability to send a fax and and e-mail with a laptop computer."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.