A Quarter of Small Businesses Unaware of the UK Broadband Rollout

A new survey of 500 small and medium sized businesses in the United Kingdom, which was conducted by AXA Business Insurance, has revealed that one in four were unaware of the publicly funded BDUK scheme to help make superfast broadband ISP connections available to 90% of the country by the end of 2015.

A similar proportion of SME’s were also unaware of the recent reduction in the rate of corporation tax. Meanwhile 13% of those who were aware of the change in corporation tax could not state the correct rate. Suffice to say that if knowledge is power then a lot of businesses could be missing out on some major opportunities.

Darrell Sansom, MD of AXA, said:

“The numbers of small businesses in the UK continue to climb rapidly but it seems that many could be missing opportunities to help their business along the way through a lack of awareness of the support that may be available to them. We are also concerned that among those that are more aware, many are not seeing the benefit that they would want.”

Indeed many of the local Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) and Urban Broadband Fund (UBF) related schemes often include special initiatives that are designed to help encourage the uptake of superfast broadband, sometimes by offering to help cover at least part of the initial setup cost. Being ignorant of such benefits could thus prove to be a costly mistake.