UK-based telecom services major, British Telecom (BT) will now cover 2.5 million homes for its ultra-fast broadband services of 100 mbps. Originally BT had planned to cover 10 million homes for its ultra-fast broadband services. The move also enables BT to cover 10 % of households in UK with the high-speed broadband services.

BT says that the increase in coverage of the households was possible because of the huge cost savings achieved by the firm. The new network is estimated to cost £1.5bn.

BT claims that the cost savings have been achieved because of its strategy to divide the network into two parts. The first part involves the “fibre-to-the-cabinet” under which BT will replace copper wires running from its phone exchanges to street cabinets with fibre optic cable. The second part involves the “fibre-to-the-home” under which BT will  extend fibre from phone exchanges.

BT now plans to cover the additional homes under the fibre-to-the-home network category. These will mainly be in urban areas where network rollout cost will relatively be low.

BT’s ultra-fast services is expected to raise the benchmarks for broadband services in UK where average broadband speeds prevailing at the moment are 4.1 mbps.