TWENTY thousand homes in Bournemouth will be ready to receive superfast broadband by the end of the year, says the team who have taken over the Fibre City project.

Boss Greg Mesch said Bournemouth would have the “fastest, most secure high speed network in the country – that’s fact.”

He met senior council officers last week after his firm, City Fibre Holdings, took over the contract in April.

Work under the previous company suddenly stopped in October and the parent firm H2O went into administration.

Mr Mesch, an American with 30 years’ experience in installing telecommunications networks, said Bournemouth council had been “very supportive” of the new plans.

The firm has raised finance to “stabilise” the network over the next 90 days and “clean up” some of the work above and below ground.

Of the 24,000 homes currently connected, 20,000 should be ready to receive a 100 megabyte commercial services by the end of the year.

Mr Mesch said the long term plan was to hopefully build on that so that 65,000 to 70,000 homes are connected over the next 12 to 18 months.

He said the new team had “far greater experience” in rolling out telecommunications than the old one.

“It’s not just about putting fibre into the ground, but building a network,” he said.

He said that all the roads in Boscombe, Winton and Moordown that had been opened and half dug up have now been closed.

He said Bournemouth was even ahead of Google’s own fibre city, Kansas, where there had been so much interest in the project that competing cities had offered to change their names.

He added: “It’s one of the most robust structures in the UK.”

He said his firm might be considered third in the UK after BT and Virgin.

Mr Mesch has raised more than one billion euros for installing telecommunications networks in Ireland, Holland, Belgium and Germany.