The Surrey County Council (SCC) has put out an official public tender (UK-Kingston upon Thames: telecommunications services) that reveals more details about its plan to make superfast broadband ISP services available to 100% of the residents and businesses in the South East England (UK) county by December 2013 (this date is said to be "subject to change by mutual agreement").

The tender envisages a project that could be worth between £10m and £40m +vat, which is very much dependent upon a sizeable award from the governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) office budget of £530m until 2015. Ideally half of the funds would also come from private sector investment (i.e. match funding).


The UK government wants 90% of "people in each local authority area" to be within reach of a superfast (25Mbps+) broadband ISP service by 2015. Surrey's goal is set approximately two years ahead of that target, which is very ambitious and we wouldn't be surprised if it slipped.

On the other hand Surrey is already better equipped than many other county's and as a result the 2013 target might not be all that unrealistic. Ofcom states that the county's average broadband sync speed is 7.4Mbps, with an impressive 77% having access to superfast broadband. However 13.7% still receive speeds of less than the governments minimum target of 2Mbps. Credits to Computing for spotting the tender.