BT has announced plans to bring 40% (10million) of homes in the UK within reach of high speed fibre optic broadband by the year 2012.
In a £1.5bn investment plan, the telco has also stated that it will be putting fibre-optic cable into 1 million homes directly, rather than simply to the local area, making services to these customers even faster. BT has put the pressure on Ofcom however, stating that these changes will only be made if the regulator allows it to get a decent return on its investment.
Customers not within the 1 million lucky homes would still be offered broadband between 40 and 60 megabits per second BT has said. There was no figure given for users within the 1 million households.
In order to pay for the project BT has said it will suspend its £2.5bn share buy-back programme in July - by which time it will have returned more than £1.8bn.