Herefordshire and Gloucestershire issue joint rural broadband tender

Herefordshire and Gloucestershire County Councils are looking to procure a shared wholesale broadband service for between £15m and £50m that will deliver 2Mbit/s to all premises in identified rural areas by March 2015.

This comes nearly eight months after it was announced that Herefordshire would be one of the recipients of funding for the first tranche of Broadband Delivery UK- (BDUK-) funded broadband rollout pilots. The other counties were the Highlands, North Yorkshire and Cumbria.

A spokesperson from BDUK said: "Herefordshire Council will have been working out how many lines were needed, who needs access to the lines and how best these should be provisioned during those eight months. In addition, the council realised somewhere along the line that it would be financially beneficial to join forces with Gloucestershire Council."

BDUK will allocate more money to the project as a result of Gloucestershire's involvement as it distributes money according to how much it thinks is required per area.

Since the first allocation last October there has been a second tranche of money awarded to Wiltshire, Norfolk, Devon and Somerset.

No one from either Herefordshire or Gloucestershire council was available to be more specific about the likely cost of the project or how much extra the area is receiving following Gloucestershire's involvement.

The tender notice states that it expects to divide the tender between seven suppliers who may be expected to invest additional funds at their own risk.

The providers will have three years to deliver the 2Mbit/s service.

They will also have to abide by a commitment to deliver a superfast service of 30Mbit/s or more within seven years.

The service will be delivered in phases, with the first being rolled out to South Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean; this will be completed by 2013.

Tenders can be submitted through Herefordshire's eTendering portal.