"That's why we're treating the public sector as one customer, however large or small each individual organisation is. This means simple, predictable, pricing regardless of whether you're a local council, a fire service or a central government department."

Virgin Media's announcement echoes a recent that found there is significant confusion among public sector bodies as to the benefits of PSN.

In a survey of 1,300 public servants, BT found that 56 percent working in an IT or commercial function did not know where their organisation stood in the process of adopting a PSN.

It also highlighted that of the 44 percent of IT savvy public servants that knew what stage their organisation was at in adopting PSN, only 12 percent were carrying out initial scoping exercises. Nine percent have an implementation in place and seven percent are carrying out detailed feasibility studies.

The PSN connectivity framework will initially last for two years, but the government has reserved the right to extend the contract for an additional two years after this.