BT's 21st Century Network - the long-awaited overhaul of the country's communications infrastructure that promises high-speed broadband connections and greater capacity - is gradually whirring into life.

BT today introduced the first wholesale broadband services that will rely on the new infrastructure, meaning that smaller ISPs which have not rolled out their own faster networks will be able to offer connection speeds of up to 24 megabits per second (Mbps).

Critics said, however, that the arrival of 21CN - eight years in to the 21st century - would do little to help Britain catch up with many European countries. France is said to be at least five years ahead in communications infrastructure terms and close to being able to offer speeds of 50-100Mbps.

To date only some providers - such as Virgin, Sky and Talk Talk - have been able to offer high-speed broadband packages of 20Mbps or more, thanks to a technology known as 'local loop unbundling', which has allowed them to increase speeds on the section of the line that runs from the local exchange to people's homes.

BT and other providers that rely on its wholesale broadband products have not increased speeds yet, and have chosen to wait instead until the arrival of 21CN, which uses an altogether different technology to speed up their connections.

BT said that initially about a million homes would be able to benefit from the new network - principally in the London area - rising to about ten million by the middle of next year. But critics said that even then, the majority of homes that could benefit from 21CN would be in areas already served by alternative high speed products, such as Virgin's.

Approximately half of all British households can, in theory, access high-speed broadband thanks to local loop unbundling.

"Most of the roll-out will be in areas where competitiors already have high-speed services, " Ian Fogg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said. He added that BT had been slow introducing so-called 'ADSL 2+' technology, given that France was already on the way to developing an even more advanced infrastructure.

French broadband customers would soon be enjoying speeds of 50-100Mbps, Mr Fogg said, thanks to an advanced infrastructure that allows all communications - voice calls and internet traffic alike - to travel along a fibre cable the entire distance to a person's home.

Despite the evolution of 21CN, which involves a signficant overhaul of BT's core network, the 'last mile' of the journey - the distance from the local exchange to the home - still takes place over a copper wire.

BT has already been forced to push back completion of 21CN by a year to 2011, having announced the £10 billion project with much fanfare in 2004.

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