BT today announced great news for Broadband Britain with radical plans to bring mass market broadband within reach of 90 per cent of UK homes. These plans are based on technological breakthroughs and cost saving initiatives. The company also revealed that wholesale prices will be cut from May 1.

In addition, BT said that public sector demand could be aligned to help accelerate the roll out of broadband. This will help local campaign groups in their efforts to bring broadband to their communities.

Providing a major update on the company's broadband strategy, BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen said that BT was well on track to hit its target of one million ADSL connections by the summer, having recently passed the 800,000 mark. He said the speed of this progress is generating economies of scale that will help BT continue to reduce costs and progress beyond the one million figure.

He also announced that BT had made a series of technological breakthroughs that would, for the first time, bring ADSL within potential reach of 90 per cent of UK homes and small businesses. This represents a major advance from the current enabled footprint of 67 per cent.

The new initiatives mean that about 600 additional exchanges can now have trigger levels set taking potential coverage to 90 per cent. These represent the level of demand needed to make it commercially sensible for BT to take the risk of upgrading an exchange with ADSL. Within a week BT will announce trigger levels for the next 200 or so exchanges that, if enabled together with those exchanges that have existing trigger levels, would take coverage up to 85 per cent. The remainder will be announced by early summer.

Central to the setting of the new triggers is a technological development that enables exchanges to be linked together so that the costs of connecting them to the core BT network are reduced. This is one of several developments that will lead to cost savings and help BT set the new trigger levels.

This is in addition to BT extending the reach of ADSL broadband up to 6kms from the exchange. This separate development means that up to 98 per cent of people connected to an ADSL enabled exchange will be able to access the technology. This means close to 600,000 additional people will be able to access broadband from June.

BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen said: "Today's announcements mark a major milestone in the creation of Broadband Britain. BT has managed to overcome the challenge of bringing affordable broadband within reach of 90 per cent of UK homes and I am sure the news will be welcomed across the UK."

He also revealed that BT would boost the market even further by cutting the wholesale price of broadband from May 1. This is possible due to factors including reduced cost of equipment and network efficiencies. The monthly fee for the wholesale consumer product will be reduced by up to £2 and there will be even larger savings on BT's wholesale products that are aimed at service providers who serve small businesses. Prices for the 500kbs, 1Mbs and 2Mbs products will be slashed by over 50 per cent.

Mr Verwaayen said: "These price cuts will benefit everyone from service providers to consumers and businesses and will ensure that the UK continues to have some of the lowest prices in Europe."

BT said that the purchasing power of the public sector could drive demand even faster. This would reinforce BT's efforts to accelerate take up and roll out within the 90 per cent footprint and help get beyond it.

In particular, BT said that government plans to enable schools and GP's surgeries with broadband would benefit the whole community if implemented in a way that helps reduce trigger levels in non-enabled exchanges. This would speed up the roll out of ADSL and bring the benefits of broadband to a far wider audience than just the public sector. It would also be in alignment with the government's over-riding objective of having the most extensive and competitive mass market for broadband in the G7.

Mr Verwaayen added: "The challenge ahead is to ensure that exchanges hit their trigger levels as quickly as possible. The registration scheme has been a runaway success with more than 300,000 expressions of interest and it will be boosted significantly as the government starts to bring broadband to every school and GP's surgery."

BT also highlighted the success of public private partnerships. Several of these have been developed - notably in Cornwall and Scotland - and the impact has shown how successful they can be in driving take-up. BT hopes that further partnerships can be replicated widely.

One scheme where such support could work is BT's Exchange Activate programme. This innovative scheme - to bring broadband to smaller exchanges - will be launched this summer following successful trials. It will be useful in extending availability to the UK's smallest communities.

BT also stressed that, as well as launching Exchange Activate, the company was working hard to develop other solutions to bring mass market broadband to every part of the UK. Options being explored include satellite, mesh radio and other forms of wireless broadband.

Mr Verwaayen concluded by saying: "2003 could be a seminal year in the drive to achieve Broadband Britain but only if the whole industry pulls together with the support of the government. Such an approach would benefit consumers, businesses and the UK itself."

BT Wholesale has notified several price changes that will come into effect from May 1, 2003. Among these are reductions in the monthly rental fees for its IPStream Home 500 and IPStream Office range of products (listed below). There will also be a discount scheme. Connection charges for IPStream end users will remain unchanged.