Cambridgeshire County Council issues £100m tender for next-gen broadband

Supplier has to provide a multi-million pound investment to supplement public sector funding

Cambridgeshire County Council has issued a tender for the supply of next-generation broadband infrastructure in a contract that could be worth up to £100m.

The Official Journal of the European Union tender said that the new infrastructure is to enable sustainable access to at least 90 per cent of all premises, together with faster downstream connectivity of at least 2Mbit/s for all premises across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough before 2015.

The tender says that solutions should "further stimulate demand and sustainable take-up by end users through collaborative and innovative approaches to achieve the authority's objectives for economic growth and digital inclusion".

The total contract value over its lifetime is between £60m and £100m.

The notice said that this included a public sector contribution of around £30m, £23m of which is from Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council. The remaining £6.75m is from government body Broadband Delivery UK.

The successful supplier will also be required to provide a multi-million pound investment to supplement the public sector funding.