BT's chief executive has expressed his desire for the company to roll out fibre optic broadband to nine in ten UK properties.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Ian Livingston said the telecoms giant could achieve this target over the next seven years, as long as it is awarded up to £830 million in public funding to subsidise the deployment.

This is the amount of money the government announced could be taken from the BBC licence fee to help extend super-fast broadband coverage in rural parts of the country.

"We think we could get to over 90 per cent of the UK ... [and] 2017 is not an unrealistic timescale," Mr Livingston remarked.

However, the newspaper pointed out Virgin Media - BT's biggest rival in the fibre optic broadband market - is also keen to secure this money to expand its own network.

Earlier this week, BT revealed its broadband subscriber numbers increased by 114,000 between July and September 2010.

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