The Northern Ireland Broadband Improvement Project has reached a significant milestone, having connected 8,000 homes and businesses to superfast fibre broadband.

BT has been delivering the high-speed technology to local premises as part of the £24.5 million rollout initiative, which was launched in February this year.

Chief Executive of BT in Northern Ireland Colm O'Neill commented: "It is fantastic to see the progress our engineers are making with the Northern Ireland Broadband Improvement Project."

He added their work was particularly impressive due to the challenge of upgrading the current copper network to a purely fibre optic one.

Overall, the connectivity project aims to deliver the superfast internet service to some 45,000 residential and commercial properties in rural parts of Northern Ireland before the end of 2015.

Figures from telecoms regulator Ofcom released in August 2014 show that 73 per cent of households in the country had broadband access during the first quarter of 2013 - a figure that is just below that for the rest of the UK, at 77 per cent.

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