BT is to expand its Internet Protocol (IP) backbone network to cope with the anticipated demand for Internet services in Britain. By next March it claims that it will increase its points of presence (POPs) from 14 to 103. Not only will the network be 60 times faster than it is today, it will also be able to grow to 300 times the capacity of today's IP network, the company said. BT said it was also planning to deploy 100,000 extra dial ports by April 2000 -- with up to a further 100,000 planned by the following September. David Hughes, BT's head of Internet and IP network services said: "BT's IP network is fundamentally much better suited to carrying Internet traffic than the public telephone network, and does so at a lower cost, making it possible to reduce prices for Internet service providers and their customers." Today's announcement follows last week's now discredited announcement about BT's plans to slash the cost of Net access in the UK. An attempt to source BT's announcement from its corporate Web site failed this afternoon after the statement was replaced with the error message "The requested page generated an error: Invalid session." ®