Surrey is best connected county
82,000 homes and businesses covered through programme
Superfast Surrey, a partnership between Surrey County Council and BT, today announced the completion of the main phase of its programme to bring fibre broadband to those areas in the county not included in commercial roll outs.
The partnership has extended the high-speed fibre broadband coverage to more than 82,000 homes and businesses across Surrey, making it currently the best connected county in Great Britain.
The news comes shortly after the Government announced the nationwide rollout has now reached more than 2 million homes and businesses.
Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey, said: "The Government's nationwide rollout of superfast broadband is already transforming lives across the UK and this is particularly the case in Surrey, Great Britain's best connected county. We're now focusing on taking coverage even further, ensuring even more of Surrey's homes and businesses will be enjoying access to superfast speeds."
Surrey County Council Deputy Leader Peter Martin said: “This roll out has been delivered at an amazing rate of nearly 200 homes and businesses per working day, transforming lives across the county, and making Surrey the best connected county in Britain.
"Whilst celebrating this achievement, I recognise that there is still work to do to reach those remaining premises located in the more technically challenging and harder to reach places of the county. This is not, therefore, the end of the story and as a council we would like to do more.
"To understand the full scope of the remaining challenge, we intend to run a further investigation known as an Open Market Review (OMR). The results will enable us to identify how to prioritise the use of any remaining funds to address issues of broadband coverage and speed across the county."
Bill Murphy, managing director next generation access at BT, said: “We have been working hard to get to this tremendous milestone achievement, which has seen the communications landscape completely transformed, on time and on budget, and we are keen to do even more.
“This project is boosting the local economy and helping to create and protect local jobs. Thanks to high-speed fibre broadband, companies like Yubico, can run its international operations from a 400 year-old house in one of Surrey’s oldest villages as easily as if in a high tech business park.”
In delivering the fibre broadband infrastructure the Superfast Surrey project has: • Laid around 250 miles of fibre optic cable, the distance between London and Middlesbrough. • Upgraded more than 30 rural telephone exchanges across the county to high speed fibre broadband. • Installed more than 600 green road-side cabinets and fibre structures. • Helped Surrey record the second highest take-up of fibre broadband in the country.
