The UK Government’s £5 million Better Broadband Subsidy Scheme, which offers grants worth £400 (maximum) to rural households that are unable to get at least a 2Mbps broadband speed (this helps to get a faster connection installed), has been extended until the end of 2018.
The BBSS was first setup at the end of 2015 (here) and at the time it aimed to provide help for an estimated 300,000 premises (mostly rural areas), specifically those that couldn’t currently receive a minimum download speed of 2Mbps and which might not benefit from the national Broadband Delivery UK rollout of 24Mbps+ capable “superfast broadband” services (now expected to reach 98% UK coverage by around 2020).
Originally it looked as if this would be able to harness c.£60 million from the Government’s old non-binding “2Mbps for all” Universal Service Commitment (USC), which struggled to achieve its original ambition (i.e. everybody able to get speeds of 2Mbps by 2015), but at some point this was downgraded to a budget of £5m and the rest of that funding went back into the BDUK programme.
The scheme has so far issued over 10,000 voucher codes and consumed £3.1 million of its £5m budget (here). A wide variety of satellite, fixed line and fixed wireless ISPs have made use of these vouchers and many of those have only recently been approved as suppliers. Suffice to say that there has been some desire for an extension beyond the current December 2017 end date and the Government clearly took note of that.
Matt Hancock, UK Minister for Digital, said:
“Thanks to the UK Government’s rollout of superfast broadband, more than 94 per cent of the UK can now access superfast broadband speeds and thousands more homes and businesses are being reached every week.
There is still more to be done to get decent broadband to all and the Better Broadband Scheme helps people with the very worst broadband, to provide immediate assistance to those most in need. I’m delighted to say we are extending the scheme to help people in some of the most rural and hard to reach areas of the country.”
The Government are of course separately working to introduce a new legally-binding 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation (USO), which could be enforced from 2020. On the surface this would appear to conflict with the BBSS extension, although we’ve been informed that it would instead continue to provide immediate help to those who are sub-2Mbps (at least until the USO rollout reaches them).
Furthermore, taking out a broadband service under this scheme will not prevent your premises from being considered for superfast broadband in the future.
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