Govt's business broadband voucher scheme predicted to fail
The government's scheme to improve business broadband connections by offering firms vouchers has been predicted to fail.
According to Cotswolds Broadband chief executive Hugo Pickering, the government has not successfully promoted the project so many organisations remains unaware of it.
The government recently unveiled a revamp of the voucher scheme in a bid to encourage more businesses to sign up.
Speaking to Cable.co.uk, Mr Pickering argued that the only way businesses have found out about the broadband improvement scheme is via word of mouth.
He said: "It wasn’t because someone called them, or sent them an email and said 'Hey! You’re a small business located near a big city. You can’t get decent broadband and you’re not alone. You can get a grant that will help you up your game!'
"If someone told these businesses they could get a whopping great grant that could help, so they could up their sales, their cloud computing or what have you, then things would be different."
Small to medium-sized businesses in 22 cities around the UK are eligible for grants of up to £3,000 each to spend on improvements to their business broadband connections.
Announcing the changes to the programme in August, the government explained that the money can be used to cover the capital and equipment costs of upgrading their connection. However, take-up of the voucher scheme has remained slow. A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport stated that 3,000 organisations have taken advantage of the scheme so far.
Prime minister David Cameron suggested that boosting business broadband could open up new export opportunities for a lot of companies, adding it could bring "China to Cardiff, Brazil to Bristol and the Emirates to Edinburgh".
The government made £100 million available in funding when it launched the scheme, but just £10.5 million - a little over ten per cent - has been handed out to small businesses to date.
Businesses looking to move services into the cloud should evaluate the performance of their existing network and consider setting up a leased line or MPLS network.
(Image: Kainet)
