South coast seaside resort Bournemouth is to be the UK's first large town to have both residential and business fully connected with an optical fibre network.

H2O Networks is providing the fibre, the majority of which will go into Bournemouth's sewer system using H2O's fibre optical cable underground sewer (FOCUS). H2O networks say the cost was around £30 million and that the bandwidth provided to over 88,000 homes in Bournemouth would exceed current ADSL speeds by "typically tens or even hundreds of Mbit/s."

"Many households and broadband customers in the UK have insufficient connectivity bandwidths because they are attached to legacy networks deployed in the 20th Century that just can’t cope with demand," said H2O Networks' CEO Elfed Thomas. "Our solution brings us right into the 21st Century and beyond, with speeds in excess of 100Mbit/s.”

Another advantage touted by H2O Networks is that deploying fibre through the ready-made ducts the sewers provide means, "The expensive and environmentally unfriendly method of digging up the roads is unnecessary and disruption to the road infrastructure is kept to a minimum. In addition, the system is at least 80 per cent faster to deploy than traditional methods."

H2O Networks said that where sewers could not be used it would install fibre using its patented blown mini duct (BMD) system, which would cause minimal disruption locally as it doesn't require a "civil dig".