40941 Businesses Take Broadband Connection Vouchers – Breakdown by City

The Government’s Connection Voucher scheme, which offers grants worth between £100 and £3,000 to help SMEs around 50 UK cities get a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) service installed, has confirmed that 40,941 businesses have now benefitted from the vouchers (up sharply from 15K in Q1 2015).

The original scheme was supported by around £100m from the £150m Urban Broadband Fund (“Super-Connected Cities“), which was given a further £40m boost last year and from April 2015 a total of 50 cities (including many outlying areas) became able to offer the vouchers.

Connection Voucher Cities

Original cities:

Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Derry / Londonderry, Edinburgh, Leeds, London , Manchester, Newcastle, Newport, Oxford, Perth, Portsmouth, Salford, York.

Additional cities (from April 2015)*^:

Bournemouth, Chelmsford, Dundee, Exeter, Glasgow, Gloucester, Hull, Inverness, Ipswich, Leicester, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Nottingham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Preston, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend on Sea, Stirling, Stoke on Trent, Sunderland, Swansea, Swindon, Wolverhampton

*^ Funding for the new cities is on a first come, first serve basis (i.e. no specific allocations like the original / existing cities)

The voucher scheme itself is officially expected to run until March 2016, although with more than 1,000 applications now being received each week it’s likely that the remaining funds will run out before the end of this year.

The Broadband Delivery UK office informed ISPreview.co.uk that £26.8m of the additional £40m has already been committed and we wouldn’t be surprised if the whole pot was used up by the end of October.

Ed Vaizey MP, Digital Economy Minister, said:

“Our offer to small businesses has been a tremendous success and is proving incredibly popular. More than 40,000 UK businesses have already taken up our offer which is aimed at boosting both their broadband speeds as well as their bottom line. Businesses need to act now to ensure they don’t miss out on this fantastic offer and I’m urging all eligible businesses to apply now before it’s too late.”

In terms of uptake London, which is the biggest city by far and has been involved in the scheme since the start, unsurprisingly reports the strongest uptake (11,664) and they’re followed by the other major population centres of Leeds, Bradford (their strategy is combined), Manchester and Birmingham.

The regional picture looks like this.

• Scotland – 2087
• Wales – 2042
• Northern Ireland – 1867
• North West – 6344
• North East – 1291
• Yorks and Humber – 5734
• Midlands – 5179
• London – 11664
• East of England – 1407
• South East – 1592
• South West – 1734

It’s easy to forget that the demand-led voucher scheme was hastily setup in 2013 after fears of network overbuilding triggered legal challenges by BT and Virgin Media (here). The Europe Commission also expressed competition concerns about putting state aid into urban areas, where the private sector should have less trouble making a case for investment (here).