One area's initiative to deploy a fibre-optic broadband infrastructure must have a place in the national system overall, according to a major voice in the industry.

Edd Dawson, the editor of Broadband.co.uk, said the investment is fantastic for the future of York, following York Data Services' £250,000 spending plan to install a fibre link of 2GB to the internet hub in London Docklands.

The expert explained: "It is a great investment in infrastructure for the future. The problem that I do see with local initiatives is that there is no real national joined-up infrastructure plan, which means that supply is patchy."

In effect, Mr Dawson said that York is very similar to the UK as a whole as the adoption of domestic fibre-optic connections is very much going to depend on whether or not the fibre goes past the user's property.

According to York Data Services last week, connections to the new line will improve services for over 100 small businesses in IT and other firms which already have fast fibre broadband connectivity from the organisation.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.