Coventry and Warwickshire Gigabit Voucher Scheme

Small and medium sized businesses in Coventry & Warwickshire could now benefit from grants of up to £3000 to get gigabit broadband installed as part of a £2 million trial taking place in four areas around the UK.

Suppliers will be offering vouchers worth between £500 and £3000 each to local businesses which can then be used to pay for the installation of gigabit speed connections. The aim of the pilot is to encourage the market to extend full fibre infrastructure in the UK by increasing demand and reducing the cost to customers.

The many benefits of a full fibre gigabit connection include:

  • Allowing businesses to upload and download massive files in a matter of seconds
  • Enabling widespread use of video conferencing throughout an organisation
  • Providing an unprecedented level of reliability whilst greatly enhancing resilience
  • Future proofing - making sure that businesses have the technology in place to deal with the ever increasing demands for internet speed and connectivity.
  • Allowing businesses in remote communities to compete on a technologically level playing field with those companies based in major cities who may already have full fibre connectivity

The vouchers will support the capital costs of delivering a new gigabit capable connection to a business premises. The new connection must have a minimum speed of 100mbps and represent at least a doubling of speed compared to the service the business currently has.

Vouchers are available now and there are no set deadlines to access them.

The DCMS will stop issuing vouchers when the £2 million fund it has set up for the test phase has been allocated or by March 2019 – whichever is sooner.

Suppliers will be offering vouchers to local businesses which can then be used to pay for the installation of gigabit speed connections. The aim of the pilots is to encourage the market to extend full fibre infrastructure in the UK by increasing demand and reducing the cost to customers.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has made £2 million available for vouchers for the test phase of this scheme. Business vouchers are worth between £500 and £3,000. Those businesses whose new connection costs less than £500 will not be able to claim a voucher. If the cost of providing a connection is more than £3,000 then the business can “top up”.

For more information please visit https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk.  

Richard Middleton and Nicole Collins (Coventry City Council) will be delivering the Gigabit Voucher Scheme for Coventry and Warwickshire- please get in touch via broadband@coventry.gov.uk.