Back in 1974 I worked BT’s 120Mpbs field trial system using coaxial cable; it was the fastest line transmission system in Europe. On the modem front, the waiting list to rent (not buy) a 2400 half duplex unit was 12 months. The modem was the size of a large desktop PC! The only thing I knew about ATM was that it stood for Automatic Teller Machine as opposed to Asynchronous Transfer Mode.

Originally the BT said that it could only deploy so-called Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) to a million homes because of its cost.

But it now believes 2.5 million homes can benefit because it will be cheaper to provide than it had first thought. This is very positive news.

A further 9 million homes will receive the slower Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology by 2012.

So some 11.5 homes throughout the UK will benefit from the higher speeds

Previously BT had said that it could only lay FTTP to new-build sites - with the Ebbsfleet development in Kent is its flagship site - but now it has found a way to make it more widely available.

It will use existing ducts and overhead cables to bring fibre to brownfield sites as well.  Potential sites will be identified by a variety of factors, including geography of the region and the topology of the network.

Homes eligible for the FTTP technology will receive speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second). This compares to a top speed of 40Mbps for FTTC technology.