The move comes a week after BT said it had beaten its target of 1m wholesale broadband sales by summer 2003. It will see BT Openworld subscribers given built-in access to Yahoo! features such as SpamGuard filter for email and Yahoo! Messenger, the instant messaging service, as well as built-in firewall and anti-virus protection.
BT Yahoo! Broadband will be available to new customers from September, with existing BT Openworld broadband customers moving to the new service in a phased programme.
Pierre Danon, CEO of BT Retail, said: "With such a compelling product I believe this will provide a significant boost to our broadband sales. For customers to get the most out of the internet, several factors are crucial. Access must be safe and fast, use must be personalised and flexible, and content must be exciting, engaging and imaginative.
"By joining with Yahoo!, we can satisfy all of these criteria, as well as providing customers with support from two world-class organisations."
Yahoo! already has a similar agreement with the telecoms company SBC in the US. Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!, said: "Our alliance with SBC in the US has already proved this to be a highly successful business model with the largest growth of any US DSL service in the first financial quarter of this year."
"Through our global network, Yahoo! serves the largest broadband audience in the world, and we are committed to providing the best broadband user experience anywhere," he said.
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