BT yesterday signalled that the price of broadband access could be cut as it announced it would hit its target of getting 2m homes to use BT lines for fast, "always-on" service four months ahead of schedule.

The success of the company's broadband rollout plan, with orders running at 45,000 a week, was one of the few bright spots in a lacklustre set of third-quarter results issued yesterday.

Although pre-tax profits were up 1% at £526m, revenues were a disappointing 2.6% lower at £4.58bn as competition and regulation continued to bite into BT's core business. Turnover in BT's retail telephone business was down 9% at £2.8bn during the last three months of 2003.

The company is searching for new business from areas such as mobile services and IT to alleviate the pressure on its core telephony business. Broadband forms a crucial part of this drive.

Two years ago it set itself a target of supplying 2m wholesale lines which any internet service provider could use to supply broadband by this summer, and 5m by 2006. BT said yesterday it had 1.93m users at the end of last week.

BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen said the company would hit the 2m mark over the next few weeks "and 5m looks a lot more do-able when you have 2m behind you".

BT's own broadband ISP services, BT Broadband and BT Yahoo Broadband, supply a little under half of these wholesale broadband customers. Yesterday Pierre Danon, head of BT Retail, which runs the two ISPs, hinted that their prices could be cut to drive demand.

"There is clearly good momentum in the retail market in broadband," he said. "We might be a little bit more aggressive [on price], so watch this space."

BT is also understood to be planning a new telecommunications service, using a technology known as voice over internet protocol or VoIP, which will allow broadband users to talk to each other through phones attached to their PCs for a fraction of what it costs using a traditional phone.

Mr Danon must be hoping these new services are more successful than the last initiative launched by BT Retail - a return to the mobile phone market. By the end of January, three months after launch, it had attracted just 28,000 subscribers. "We have said we will have 1m customers and we will, but it may take some time," admitted Mr Danon.

The best performing BT division over the third quarter was its global services arm, which analysts had called to be closed down two years ago. Revenues rose 9% to just over £1.4bn as the unit clinched a number of large IT contracts.

· France Télécom made a profit of just over €3.2bn (£2.1bn) last year, against the record loss of €20.7bn in 2002.