Sir Christopher Bland, the chairman of BT, yesterday admitted to MPs that the take-up of high speed internet services has been low. He undertook to provide details of a cut in the price of broadband access to boost demand "within weeks rather than months".

"We have to address the question of prices," he told the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport. The business needed a new broadband strategy "that sets more ambitious targets for BT than we have had in the past".

Ben Verwaayen, who took up his post as chief executive last week, is expected to make plain his desire to transform the group into a force in broadband services when he reports BT's results tomorrow. So far a few hundred thousand British consumers have broadband, well behind the numbers in Germany.

Graham Wallace, the chief executive of Cable & Wireless, told the hearing that the poor take-up of broadband was BT's fault. The company should be forced to demerge its network of local telephone exchanges and phone lines - known as the local loop - to increase competition.

He said the turmoil in the global telecoms market had left BT in too dominant a position, an issue the competition commission should examine. "Maintenance of the status quo is not an option if we want a vibrant competitive telecoms market in the UK," he said.