ADSL availability is looking promising for the community of the North East of England today, following the collaboration between BT and OneNorthEast - the Regional Development Agency for the region in a £10m project. In the agreement between the two organisations, BT have promised to enable ADSL on all 87 of the regions exchanges - despite BT having previously classified many of these exchanges as [financially] "unviable".

Prime Minister Tony Blair was also in attendance at the event in Trimdon, Durham to see an exchange upgraded for broadband and welcomed the BT/One NorthEast broadband project.

BT announced that the telco would be contributing £5.3m towards the £10m project, which will see a further 24 exchanges ADSL enabled in order to meet the March 2005 deadline set by One NorthEast as a target for 100% exchange enablement.

Complete 100% availability of ADSL will still be however, some way off for many people in excess of the maximum 6km distance in order for ADSL to be viable. Often referred to as the 'last mile', BT are trialing radio based broadband.