BT includes 178 more exchanges in fibre broadband rollout

An additional 178 exchanges have been included in BT's fibre optic broadband rollout programme, the telecoms giant has announced.

More than 1.8 million homes and businesses are in line to benefit from the infrastructure improvement work, the bulk of which will take place throughout 2012.

When it has completed these and previously-announced fibre broadband deployments, BT will have finished around 80 per cent of its commercial rollout.

Over six million UK properties already have access to the service and the company claimed it is on track to increase the number to ten million in 2012.

Chief executive of Openreach Olivia Garfield said: "We continue to make tremendous strides with our fibre programme.

"It is important that as many premises as possible have access to fibre."

The announcement comes just a matter of days after BT rolled out super-fast broadband in London's Tech City community, a hub for digital, creative and high-technology businesses.

Once the upgrade work is finished, more than 10,000 properties in the area will be connected to fibre broadband.