BT Press Release 27 September 2002

BT SETS ADSL BROADBAND DEMAND TRIGGERS FOR 58 MORE EXCHANGES

BT Wholesale today increased to 653 the number of exchanges where demand levels for broadband upgrade have been set with the announcement of trigger levels for a further 58 exchanges.

The cost-based demand levels have been set at between 300 and 550 customer registrations and the ADSL broadband availability checker on the www.bt.com/broadband website will be updated to show the new trigger levels this Saturday, September 28, as part of the regular website update.

Since the broadband registration scheme was launched at the beginning of July more than 100,000 individual lines have been registered via service providers. Demand at exchanges at Todmorden in West Yorkshire, Penn in Buckinghamshire, Knaresborough in North Yorkshire and Irby on the Wirral, has topped the trigger levels set and service providers are validating demand so broadband can be provided.

BT Wholesale director broadband, Bruce Stanford, said: "Over the last two weeks we have seen demand levels hit triggers at exchanges in Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire and on Merseyside.

"In other areas the level of interest is growing rapidly and we expect demand to hit target levels for providing ADSL broadband in many locations including the north of Scotland and the Welsh valleys in the coming weeks as awareness of the benefits of broadband grows."

For 173 exchanges triggers based on the costs identified in the review would be unrealistically high in relation to the number of lines served but BT continues to investigate ways of reducing the cost of enabling such exchanges so more trigger levels can be set.

Trials of different methods of delivering broadband to areas where ADSL is not currently viable continue, including trials of satellite and wireless services and a number of joint public and private sector funding initiatives.

Demand at exchanges where ADSL is not currently available will continue to be tracked through the broadband registration scheme.

People interested in broadband services can check on the bt.com/broadband website to see if their exchange has been enabled for ADSL, whether a trigger level has been set and to check the level of demand currently registered against that exchange.

Notes to Editors

Anybody wanting to sign up for ADSL broadband services should register through a service provider who will in turn feed numbers into a central BT Wholesale database. Details of all ADSL service providers and a list of those taking part in the registration scheme are available at www.bt.com/broadband which has links to the service providers' web-sites. To date more than 66 per cent of UK households are served by the 1119 exchanges BT has upgraded to provide ADSL broadband.

Broadband demand trigger levels announced September 27, 2002 available here in PDF format.