The news follows April's announcement by cable broadband providers NTL and Telewest that they had reached one million subscribers between them. In October 2002, the one million milestone was reached when taking into account all types of connection.
To mark the achievement, BT is giving a boost to parts of the UK that do not yet have access to ADSL broadband. Every "trigger level" across the UK will be reduced by 50 registrations, a reduction of up to 25%.
Trigger levels reflect the number of people who need to register their demand for broadband before BT upgrades an exchange with ADSL technology. The news means that 69 exchanges will immediately hit their triggers and work will begin to upgrade them with broadband technology.
More than 71% of UK households are currently connected to broadband enabled exchanges and BT estimates this figure will increase to more than 80% by the end of 2003.
Ben Verwaayen, BT chief executive said:
"The UK is one of the most competitive broadband environments in the world and this is shown by the fact that more than 100 service providers supply broadband over our phone lines to one million customers."
BT's next target is to hit five million connections by 2006.
