Businesses – funding to improve broadband speed
Introduction
The Gigabit Voucher scheme is aimed at small to medium businesses with less than 250 employees and a turnover of 50 million euros or less and a balance sheet of 43 million euros or less to improve their broadband speeds in their main business premises. The scheme is administered by the Department for Culture Media and Sports (DCMS) and provides funding towards the cost of connection of fibre broadband to the premises greatly enhancing broadband speeds up to 1 Gigabit.
How it Works
The business, if interested just needs to contact the registered suppliers of the scheme and get them to quote for connection to fibre broadband. The supplier will then connect the business and apply for the voucher to offset the cost of the connection. The supplier can claim up to £3000 per business for the connection costs and then provide up to gigabit speeds to the premises. A group of businesses can also claim under the scheme making the connection costs free or vastly reduced in most circumstances.
Residential properties can also benefit from the voucher scheme but any bids from residential properties must be business led. Suppliers can claim up to £3000 for the business and up to 6 residential properties each at £500 pounds.
What does Gigabit mean
One gigabit is the same as 1,000 megabits – so it’s a big leap forward in connection speeds that could benefit you and your business into the future. Full fibre also supports symmetrical connections – meaning your upload and download speeds can be the same.
Details
Further details of the scheme can be found at the DCMS gigabit website https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/
And through WSCC business website http://www.businesswestsussex.co.uk/369-gigabit-broadband-for-businesses-scheme-.html
Contained within that website is a link to suppliers that have responded to a West Sussex County Council questionnaire and some have taken the time to speak to us so that we can understand what they can offer businesses in West Sussex.
They are all more than happy to speak to businesses, community leaders and individuals about whether the scheme would work for you. All of them have given WSCC their named contacts for the scheme and would happily advise you on what they can offer.
The reason for acting now is that once the national pot of money is gone we have no guarantee that the scheme will continue so we would encourage every SME in West Sussex to at least enquire into eligibility to improve connection speeds.
