The company claims that this will give 99.6 percent of households and commercial premises access to broadband. About 570 exchanges, covering 100,000 premises, will remain outside the broadband pale. About 400 of these are in Scotland and the majority of the rest are in Wales, with the odd rural English exchange thrown in.
The move comes after a weekend of speculation over the possibility that new regulator Ofcom could dust off old plans and demand that BT be carved up in the same way as the gas and electricity industries; into a supplier arm and a customer arm.
A BT spokesman said: "Waiting for people in an area to hit the registration target was not a very joined-up way of doing it – we will save money on this planned approach, by linking some exchanges in a region, for instance.
"We will be in partnership talks about how to link the remaining households - by DSL, by wireless, perhaps by satellite."
Alison Ritchie, BT chief broadband officer, paid tribute to local campaigners for broadband access. She said: "The impact that local campaigners have had has been phenomenal. These local heroes have helped change the market and this in turn has contributed to our decision to take this approach."
The demand registration scheme, launched mid-2002, led to the upgrade of more than 2,000 exchanges, spurred by 880,000 individual registrations.
The BT spokesman pointed out that the new scheme would not only allow BT to plan its investment but "would give certainty to other providers".
Talkback
Fantastic - the result of ONE's broadband rollout strategy which encouraged a brilliant rethink by BT. Logic has finally landed! (ONE is the RDA for the North East of England, which operates some highly successful broadband projects include wireless etc., through www.n-e-life.com)
This is utterly misleading. If BT meant that 99.6% of exchanges would be covered, fine, but to claim that % of the UK is going to have access to ADSL is lies.
I live in what they term a rural area, 500m from the centre of RAF Logistics in Cambridgeshire, on a housing estate with another few hundred houses and we cannot even get ISDN. My house is 8.23km from the telephone exchange BT choose to connect me to, Huntingdon. My house is in the PE28 postcode range.
I am surrounded by BB enabled exchanges, Huntingdon, Warboys, St Ives yet cannot get this here.
I know I am not alone in this situation locally, there's plenty of other villages the same, and Im certain this is repeated throughout the country.
If our lines went to a closer exchange Im sure we could get it, or if BT put in a substation or whatever they are called. The irony of living so close to the RAF base with its digital communications, provided by and supported by BT is not lost on many of us who live and work here. Mostly like they charge the RAF a fortune for this, us as normal customers it seems can go to hell.
If I see much more of this kind of info from BT I am going to contact Oftel I think, because they are misleading people in my opinion. Phoning them, naturally does no good, you get passed from openworld to BT and noone admits to knowing anything.
its ok for bt to make claims like this but what is the real number of people able to get broadband?
i live in an area that was enabled last year.the village where the exchange is located close to our town,yet only a few located near to where the cable enters the town can get broadband.when bt are asked what they are going to do the reply is you will have to wait for satilite or cable which we dont have and is forthcoming in the forseeable future.
so all i can see is bt pumping out numbers and trying to blind us when they are notcoming up to scratch.
What about the people who are within range of a big ADSL-enabled exchange but still can't get Broadband.
I am approximately 4.5km from Bridgend exchange but I keep getting refused because BT insists that my property is more than 6km away. I've done some research and found that neighbouring streets can get Broadband, some are further away and some closer, only my street can't. Figure that one out!