By 2012, 2.5 million homes will benefit from the super-fast broadband, called Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP). A further 9 million homes will receive the slower Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology.

The FTTP technology, being supplied by BT, has top speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second) compared to 40Mbps for FTTC technology.

The BT spin-off arm, Openreach, is responsible for the fibre rollout and recently announced two brownfield trial sites in Milton Keynes and Highams Park, London, for FTTP. Some 20,000 homes and businesses will receive speeds of up to 100Mbps by March 2010.

Steve Robertson, chief executive of Openreach, is reported as saying that BT was responding to demand from service providers for the faster fibre.

It’s claimed that the UK already leads the world when it comes to broadband availability. A recent study of the global state of broadband, conducted by Oxford University’s Said Business School, put the UK 25th out of 66 countries in terms of the quality of its network.

But BT faces fierce competition from other operators, especially Virgin Media with cable network. Virgin cable network has speeds of up to 50Mbps and has been trialling speeds rising to 200Mbps.