The Gigabit Voucher Scheme is part of the Local Full Fibre Networks Programme in the UK currently being delivered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). It is aimed at assisting SMB (Small and Medium Sized Business) businesses with funding grants of up to £3000 to facilitate upgrading to a Gigabit capable full fibre optic Internet connection.
SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) need to meet a number of criteria to be eligible for up to £3,000 from the Gigabit Voucher Scheme. The business must employ less than 249 employees, have a turnover of less than £45 million, or have received under £200k of public funding grants in the last 3 years of contracting the relevant gigabit internet package.
Fibre optic based networks, especially at gigabit rates, offer much faster, and more reliable internet connection. High speed internet access is essential for businesses that wish to connect to the Cloud services in order to access new markets, increase staff productivity as well as future-proof for the digital challenges of tomorrow.
There are a number of key requirements for the connection being purchased to qualify for the scheme. The first being that it must be a gigabit-capable circuit, and that the business must not already have a gigabit-capable connection in place. The delivered speed of the ordered connection must be at least 100Mbps, and it must at least be double the speed of the existing internet service being delivered.
The new contract being entered for service must be for at least one year, and at least six months of the service must be paid for. The voucher provided will be for a minimum of £500, and a maximum of £3000 toward the cost of the initial internet connection – not the ongoing cost of the leased line rental.
What are the key Benefits of Gigabit Internet?
Businesses around the world benefit more and more from digitisation each year, with these benefits sharply increasing as time goes by. The more these improvements happen, the more stress is placed on a business’s data connections. These connections were more than capable a few years ago, but they simply do not provide enough speed or throughput for businesses to take advantage of modern cloud-based services.
There has been a significant shift towards ‘X’AAS’ cloud services, essentially, anything provided ‘as a service’. From VoIP to storage and backup to wide area networking systems, SMEs are now taking advantage of low cost, high reliability hosted solutions to reduce their needs for expensive networking servers and skilled on-site IT engineers.
The use of these services, though, can only be enabled by high-speed, reliable cost-effective internet connections. Without a modern, fast, resilient internet service, these cost-saving and growth-enabling trends remain out of bounds for many SMBs.
If your business is using an older, slower internet connection, then the Gigabit Voucher Scheme offers a potential way for you to modernise your businesses connectivity, in turn, taking advantage of a multitude of new cloud services and communication channels that the ever-evolving internet has to offer.
What could you do with a new Gigabit capable Internet connection?
- Save the business time and money and increase staff productivity with Service Level Agreement (SLA) guaranteed broadband, ensuring you always have a consistent, reliable, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA).
- Take advantage of new technologies such as Voice over IP (VoIP) benefiting from free calls and the flexibility to work from anywhere.
- Implement Unified Communications solutions across your business.
- Video conferencing with clients and employees across the globe.
- Fully utilise Cloud computing with no limits on your ability to access critical data, plus with an ultra-fast internet connection you can upload or backup more, faster.
- Improve your employees’ or customers’ experience with fast and reliable in-house Wi-Fi.
Juno Telecoms are a leading independent supplier of super-fast internet connection, especially business grade ethernet circuits or leased lines. We work with several different wholesale partners so that we can provide the best price with the fastest possible delivery times for our clients.
Using the Gigabit Voucher Scheme will provide your business with a business grade Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) circuit fully supported by Service Level Agreements (SLA). This is essential when you are looking to a fully converged data solution for your office with a connection capable of being used simultaneously for Internet traffic, telephony, remote worker and office networking, data backup and cloud access.
Need help to choose the right package for your business? Call one of our specialists or click the enquire now (or contact us) buttons to email in an enquiry.
Don’t miss out! The previous voucher scheme in 2015 was closed six months early due to the high number of SMB applications. The scheme is only available until March 2019 or until funds run out.
