Virgin Media has claimed a number of its customers in Bournemouth have had their connections cut due to the road work being carried out for the Fibrecity project.

As part of i3 Group's £30 million Fibrecity project to provide 100Mb broadband connectivity to the residents, contractors have installed more than 200 kilometres of fibre optic cabling throughout the town.

Virgin Media said that it had received complaints from customers who said contractors cut through their existing cables while digging up roads and pavements.

Town residents Trisha and Terry Rudd lost access to digital TV, internet and telephone services for more than a week until Virgin could carry out a temporary repair.

Mrs Rudd said: "It would be frightening for somebody who has just got the telephone, can't get out and doesn't have a mobile. Luckily we have one, but some of the older people don't."

A spokesperson for Virgin Media said: "We will also be escalating this issue with Fibrecity management as we are not happy with the frequency at which this is happening."

The fibre optics, which were originally going to be routed through the town's sewers, are being deployed in the ground following contractual problems with Wessex Water.

David Burnand, a spokesman for i3 Group, said the firm had connected 20,000 homes using microtrenching, which enabled it to finish a street in a day.

The technique is supposed to lay the new fibre optic network above any other cables which may be in the ground. However, in some cases, it seems that original cables aren't as low as expected.