British Telecom seems to have taken up cudgels on behalf of the UK following the study sponsored by Cisco, which ranked countries on basis of their preparedness for future broadband applications. The UK did not fare as well as was expected, trailing behind Romania and Bulgaria and falling in the “meeting today’s requirements” category.

The poor listing appears to have inspired BT to embark on a project for the upgrade of the country’s existing broadband connections and establishment of new network. Revising an earlier proposal to provide high speed broadband to a million homes by 2012, BT has now decided to increase the number of beneficiaries to 2.5 million, more than double the number proposed in its original plan.

The project will use top-of-the-line FTTP (fibre-to-the-premises) technology to bring high-speed broadband via fibre optic cables that will be laid directly to the user’s home from the exchange. Download speeds of up to 100Mb are expected to be available after the upgrade. While the earlier proposal was based on the same technology, it was being tested for use in conjunction with FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet) technology.

FTTC can effectively offer up to 40 Mb speeds, involving the use of copper wires in the last stretch of the connection from the street to the user’s home.

Openreach, the network initiatives division of BT, made no secret of the fact that the expansion and upgrade initiative are part of BT’s focused drive to establish the UK as a world leader as far as internet speed and connectivity is concerned. Top-level decision makers worldwide agree that economic growth in the near future will be fuelled by broadband. With an estimated £1.5 billion budget for upgrading its broadband network and improving its existing copper network, BT seems to have quite an ambitious project at hand.

For information on your ISP and corresponding broadband speed, try using the broadband check from Broadband Genie to get a snapshot of your current download and upload speeds. It’s a good site to compare BT Broadband prices and service with the other top internet service providers such as Virgin Media Broadband and O2 Broadband.