BT has announced it is to speed up the delivery of superfast broadband so it will be available to a million homes by next spring.

The telecoms giant said the move will double the original number of homes capable of accessing the technology, rising to 1.5 million by early summer next year.

The pilots of the technology went live this week in Muswell Hill, north London, and Whitchurch, south Wales.

Lisburn is one of 69 exchange areas that will be upgraded with fibre-based access services as part of BT’s £1.5bn investment programme, making fast broadband services available to close to 14,000 homes and businesses in the Lisburn area by summer 2010.

BT will also offer access to its network to other providers on a wholesale basis to support competition, the company said.

“We’re really delighted today that we are able to rapidly build on our first announcement in March when BT selected the Balmoral Exchange in Belfast in phase one of its UK-wide roll out plans,” Chris Clark, CEO, BT in Northern Ireland, said.

“Fibre-based broadband is the future for Northern Ireland so we’re accelerating the pace of our investment programme to support such services. A world-class network infrastructure brings immense opportunities and benefits to Northern Ireland — helping to enrich the lives of consumers and communities, giving our businesses a competitive edge as well as supporting the public sector’s Programme for Government.”

The fibre cables connected to roadside cabinets will enable BT to deliver broadband speeds up to up to 40MB per second, potentially rising to 60MB in the future in Northern Ireland, speeds currently only being used by large companies. The technology will will also deliver faster upstream speeds — crucial for uploading large files — of up to 10MB.

Faster download speeds will give customers more speed to run more than one bandwidth-hungry applications at the same time, such as high-definition movies or video projects.

sross@belfasttelegraph.co.uk