AOL broadband to be offered over NTL network

AOL has signed a deal with NTL which will see its service supplied over broadband cable connections across the UK.

AOL already supplies NTL telephony customers with its narrowband, dial-up product, an arrangement which is being extended.

The contracts are worth up to £85m to NTL over the next four years.

Prices for the service, which won't kick off until next spring, haven't been announced. However, AOL already has a broadband service over ADSL connections from BT which costs £27.99 per month.

An AOL spokeswoman said to "expect comparable pricing". AOL, long a critic of the way unbundling of local phone lines has been handled, does not break out figures for the number of broadband customers it has registered over recent months from its relationship with BT.

The spokeswoman added the NTL deal, available to the 7.2 million households already able to get NTL's broadband service, will give high-speed internet access to some homes that cannot be supplied with ADSL because of the quality of lines from local BT exchanges.

A subsequent deal with Telewest, the UK's other cable company with a different footprint to NTL, has not been ruled out.

AOL works with cable operators in the US but the NTL agreement has not been couched as a 'bring your own access' - or BYOA - deal.

AOL has around two million users in the UK.