More than a million homes and businesses have now been connected to BT's broadband high-speed internet network, the company said yesterday.

BT set itself the target of reaching a million wholesale connections by this summer in February last year, when it had only 145,000 connections.

Chief executive Ben Verwaayen said: "In February 2002 I set the challenging target of a million DSL broadband connections by summer 2003. We are there by early summer and it is a great achievement.

"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 a million customers."

The company said that as a result of passing the milestone it was cutting its "trigger levels", the number of customers expressing an interest in broadband that BT needs to upgrade its local exchange and offer the service.

It said it was cutting every trigger level in the UK by 50, a move which automatically puts 69 local exchanges in line for an upgrade.

The announcement will come as welcome news to local campaign groups who have been collecting signatures from potential broadband customers to encourage BT to upgrade their local exchange.

BT runs a national broadband network through its phone lines.

Customers deal directly with internet service providers, who pay a wholesale rate to BT for the use of the network.

Tuesday June 10, 2003