News 

The south coast city beat challenges from Dundee and Northampton, and 88,000 homes will be able to plug - if that's the right word - into the fibre opic network running through the city's sewers.

The Bournemouth rollout will take about 18 months, and H20 has yet to confirm which ISPs it will be working with and how much it expects them to charge.

Elfed Thomas, chief executive of of H2O Networks said that other towns and cities will follow.

"This is just the start of bringing next-generation connectivity to the UK," he said. "We will be announcing more towns and cities which will benefit from Fibrecity over the coming months, and plan to have a nationwide network deployed over the next few years."

H20 announced its sewer scheme in January, explaining that by using this existing infrastructure it could increase the speed while reducing the cost of installing fibre networks.

[photo by Mr J Doe]