BT has bagged a contract with the UK government to bring faster broadband connections to newly-built homes in Blighty.

The department of culture, media, and sport—which oversees the rollout of taxpayer-funded broadband in the UK—trumpeted the deal with BT as one that would "deliver superfast broadband connectivity to new build properties" in the country.

However, in most instances, BT won't be pumping fibre directly into the new builds. Instead, the telecoms giant will sweat its copper assets by offering fibre-to-the-cabinet tech, with potential download speeds of up to 76Mbps. In the UK, FTTC is served by a fibre optic connection from BT's backhaul network, via the local exchange, and then carried all the way to a streetside cabinet, where it is then delivered to the home via VDSL over a twisted pair of copper wires. All of which means broadband speeds can vary, depending on where that premises is in relation to the cabinet.

Under the agreement—which was inked between BT's infrastructure wing Openreach, and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) with Whitehall's blessing—all new developments will be offered faster broadband connections either for free, or as part of a co-funded initiative. Where joint-spending is needed, the housing industry will have access to an Openreach "rate card," which will tell homebuilders how much cash they would be required to cough up to help cover the costs of BT's local fibre deployment.

In late 2014, HBF complained that Openreach engineers were responding sluggishly to activating new BT phone lines on new build developments. “We are finding in some cases it takes 7-10 weeks before a telephone line is connected," the group's technical director Dave Mitchell told Cable.co.uk at the time.

Openreach and HBF penned a joint letter (PDF) late last week in which they pledged to work closely together under the new deal. BT promised in the missive to clear 95 percent of its backlog for existing connectivity orders for new sites by March this year. Openreach and HBF also warned that costs for smaller developments—which fall outside of existing coverage—could be very high, and added that "it is for these that wider community funding and alternative technologies could have a role to play."