An extra 800,000 homes and businesses in the UK are set to be offered access to fibre broadband services by next year, according to Openreach.

The BT division plans to make the services available in another 98 exchange areas as part of a €3.1 billion national roll-out scheme.

By the end of 2014, BT hopes to make fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK homes and businesses.

Regions set to benefit from the latest round of broadband infrastructure upgrades include Sandown on the Isle of Wight and Oban in the Highlands, indicating that the improvements are not confined to populous, urban areas.

Openreach, BT's infrastructure arm, is using a combination of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies.

FTTC allows for download speeds of up to 80Mbps and upload speeds of up to 20Mbps, the firm says, while FTTP boasts download speeds of 110Mbps, rising to 330Mbps in the not-too-distant future.

Mike Galvin, Openreach managing director for network investment, said: "This is great news for 98 communities across the UK. Our roll-out of fibre continues apace, with over 10 million homes now having access to the many benefits this technology can deliver."