THE North-East has shown that it is at the forefront of the Internet revolution by smashing cable operator ntl's broadband subscription expectations.

The firm, which has a base on Teesside, anticipated the region would be fairly slow to embrace the latest high-speed Internet technology.

Its initial target for the end of the year was to sign up 50,000 households. But the company was surprised to see that more than 100,000 have ordered the service.

The figures place the North-East ahead of London in the number of ntl customers using the service.

The news means that regionally, ntl ends on a high note in a year which was dominated by its global debt problems. The firm has yet to announce when it will emerge from the financial safety bunker afforded by Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, while struggling with a £6.9bn debt burden.

Peter Wilcock, regional managing director, said the success of ntl's broadband Internet service was the highlight of the past 12 months.

"2002 has been a challenging year for ntl," he said. "The company has undergone a major financial restructuring but for customers and for employees it has been business as usual.

"In this region, our original broadband target for 2002 was 50,000 customers but we had met this, way before the summer. This is a testament to both the quality of our service and the hard work of ntl staff.

"And we are not standing still. We are developing new products for our customers and will be offering them an even better service in 2003."

A number of new broadband services will be announced in the New Year.

Mr Wilcock said: "Customers in this region have been extremely receptive to our broadband product. As a result, our region has more ntl broadband customers than anywhere else in the UK, even London and the South-East where PC ownership and the adoption of new technology is supposed to be higher."

Nationally, ntl has 500,000 broadband Internet customers.

The North-East region covers areas between Wearside and Leicester.