A district council has called on the services of H20 Networks to implement an over-haul of its communications network by installing fibre optic broadband in sewers.

Tendring council in Essex will use the high-speed data link between the council's town hall, leisure centre and council depot.

It is estimated that H20 Networks system is capable of providing unlimited bandwidth and has is said to have less impact upon the environment because roads do not have to be dug up for installation.

Tom Canfield, strategic ICT manager at Tendring district council, stated: "When looking for a partner to replace this part of our communication infrastructure, we were keen to ensure that disruption was kept to an absolute minimum."

He added that the deployment method is around 80 per cent faster than methods used by traditional cabling countries.

In May Bournemouth became the first UK town to have a complete sewer-based high-speed broadband system installed by H20 Networks.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)