Brief: The path to universal broadband availability has become clearer, although some people have to wait another year for their high-speed access

More than 1,000 communities across the UK who can't get high-speed Internet at present learned this week exactly how long they will have to wait until they can join Broadband Britain.

On Wednesday, BT published 'ready for service' (RFS) dates for over 1,000 local telephone exchanges. These exchanges aren't currently broadband-enabled, but BT says that they will all offer ADSL services by August 2005. The RFS dates can be seen at BT's Web site.

By this point, over 99 percent of the population should be connected to an ADSL-enabled exchange.

This doesn't mean they'll all be able to get the service, though, as technical limitations mean that homes and businesses that are more than 6km from the exchange, or whose telephone line is of poor quality, still miss out.

BT is working on a solution to this, and hopes to raise the maximum line length to as much as 10km. Trials are ongoing at present, and the word from the telco is that they are going well.

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