The first phase of Surrey County Council and BT’s project to ensure every community gets a broadband boost and to help firms do business online has been completed - on time.

This means that 15,000 homes and businesses now have access to high-speed internet has as part of a scheme to make Surrey the UK’s best connected county in superfast time.

The programme will now aim to give another 15,000 premises high-quality access by the end of December as part of the drive to ensure virtually everyone in the county is covered by the end of 2014 compared with the national superfast broadband aim of 95% by 2017.

Once completed, the Superfast Surrey project will ensure the council provides high-speed fibre broadband access to more than 80,000 premises not covered commercially.

Surrey County Council’s Deputy Leader Peter Martin said: “This is great news and means we remain firmly on course to make Surrey the UK’s best connected county. Now we’ll press ahead with the next stage of our programme to ensure almost 100% high-speed internet access by next year.”