CITYFIBRE – formerly known as Fibrecity – has come back with a robust reply to BT’s broadband plans for Bournemouth.

The firm has been laying fibre-optic cables to make Bournemouth a cutting edge “Fibrecity”.

However the scheme was hit by cash shortfalls and work came to a temporary halt in October.

The company was bought out and restarted work on the 100mb connections in the spring.

However, BT Openreach has this week emerged as a potential rival.

The firm told the Daily Echo it plans to connect 62,000 homes and businesses in Bournemouth, Southbourne, Winton and Westbourne during 2012.

BT will need to upgrade its existing copper-based network. “BT is going to need a long time to deploy their network,” said Bournemouth University expert Dr Alain Renauld.

Greg Mesch, CEO at CityFibre Holdings, said: “The network we are building in Bournemouth is a true fibre to the home network.

“All our fibres will terminate inside people’s homes and offices, with no copper drop.

“Copper running into the home, as used in fibre to the cabinet builds, while cheaper to roll-out, hampers the brute strength, ultra-fast speeds and future-proofed qualities of a true fibre to the home network.

“Our network, already over 20,000 homes strong and the largest in the UK, will be ready for services by the end of the year.

“We have shovels in the ground and intend to complete the Bournemouth network to some 60,000 homes by mid-2013.”

He said Britain as a whole had been “woefully” left behind in broadband connections by the rest of Europe.

Virgin Media is also upgrading its own existing connections, which it says are of a higher quality than BT’s.

A spokesman told the Daily Echo: “We expect to carry out our upgrade in the Bournemouth area this autumn.”