Jatinder Singh joins the technical elite.

A British Telecommunications man has become one of the most highly-qualified Cisco network engineers in the world after attaining a rare combination of accreditations from the US internet equipment giant.

Jatinder Dhameeja, a BT Operate solutions engineer who originally achieved status as a Cisco certified internetwork expert (CCIE), has gone on to specialise - attaining Cisco accreditation in routing and switching and voice after successfully completing lab exams following years of gruelling study.

Jatinder, who builds Cisco internet protocol networks for global customers as part of the BT and Cisco partnership, persuaded two of his key customers - law group Norton Rose and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline - to invest in his training.

He said: "This accreditation validates my expertise to my clients, manager and others in the networking industry and gives them extra confidence. It's proof of my skills and mastery in the data and voice field and demonstrates that I can deal with complex scenarios and situations and come up with viable technical solutions." Jatinder's manager Peter Justice said: "Accreditation for our engineers is vital to show their technical abilities in this competitive market. To put Jatinder's massive achievement in perspective, there are to date only 182 people worldwide who have this multiple certification.

"His expertise has saved his customers hundreds of thousands of pounds and they have already recouped their investment." As part of his accreditation training, Jatinder built a voice over internet protocol (VoIP) lab at BT's site in Sevenoaks, and is now qualified to roll out VoIP training for BT people.

Peter said: "This will result in massive cost savings to the business.

BT really needs to cherish this kind of person."