Last week BT revealed that it planned to spend £1.5bn upgrading 10m homes in the UK to faster fibre optic broadband connections by 2012. However, while newer builds would get fibre directly to the home (FTTH), older properties would instead use a mix of fibre and existing copper infrastructure (FTTC), somewhat restricting top speeds.

The Times reports that Kabel-X may have a better solution, with its patented method of stripping copper cable away for replacement with fibre optic, which could bring FTTH to older buildings and claims to cut the costs by an estimated 80% - http://www.kabel-x.com .

It's understood that Kabel-X has run a trial of its technology with BT in Southampton, which suggests that the operator may have already decided to factor the method into its costing, or possibly even out of it. Kabel-X is also being used in the USA and some parts of Europe for similar work.