The scheme, announced by the DCMS as part of the UK government’s Urban Broadband Fund, is making vouchers available to companies with fewer than 250 employees and turnover below £40 million to cover set-up and installation fees worth between £250 and £3,000. It is being run as a market test project from 5th August until 30th September 2013 and Entanet is encouraging its partners to promote availability of the vouchers as a way of driving new orders.
Explaining the company’s participation in the scheme, Entanet’s Product Manager, Paul Heritage-Redpath said: “SMEs are the lifeblood of the UK economy and every business now relies on network connectivity to communicate with their customers. We’re delighted to support anything which helps hard-pressed businesses succeed. It’s also good to see that the scheme recognises the importance of stability, not just headline speed, for business connections. We’ll pass what we learn from this short pilot to our channel partners, who may be interested in applying as suppliers themselves to support their local business community, should the scheme be extended to more cities.”
This is something Entanet believes should and will happen. “SMEs all over the UK can benefit from faster connections, so we hope the test project is a success and that we’ll subsequently see the voucher scheme extended to other parts of the country. We’ll be ready to support our ISP and reseller partners in delivering new connections and upgrades when that happens”, said Heritage-Redpath.T