Essex UK Council Boost Gigabit Broadband Vouchers up to £8.5K

The Essex County Council in England has committed £700,000 from their budget to help top-up the funding provided under the UK Government’s rural focused Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which means that poorly served homes can now get up to £8,500 toward installing a gigabit-capable connection from an ISP.

The GBVS scheme normally offers vouchers worth up to £1,500 for homes or £3,500 for businesses to help them get gigabit-capable broadband (1000Mbps) installed, which is available to areas with broadband speeds of less than 100Mbps available today – assuming there are also no near-term plans for a gigabit deployment in the same area (either via commercial or state aid supported builds).

Some local authorities have also provided top-up funding for this, which in many cases has effectively doubled the value of these vouchers. Naturally, vouchers with bigger values are handy because they enable operators to deploy into increasingly remote areas, where the build costs would normally be far too expensive for such networks to proceed.

The story in Essex is similar, but they appear to have opted for even bigger vouchers than usual. Combined with funding from the GBVS, eligible residents will now be awarded up to £8,500 towards a gigabit-capable connection, while businesses can receive up to £15,000! That is quite a significant change.

Cllr Lesley Wagland OBE, Infrastructure and Planning, said:

“This additional funding will allow us to bring better connectivity to residents, businesses and communities who are still unable to access decent broadband speeds.

This intervention is significant as, currently, one per cent of our Essex residents and businesses are still unable to access superfast broadband speeds. We want to make sure every individual and business has the opportunity to benefit from digital technologies, and improving connectivity is the first step to achieving this goal.”

One catch with taking this approach is that the vouchers, while significantly increased in maximum value, may not reach all that many additional premises. Similarly, the £700,000 pot of funding for the top-up probably won’t last very long.

According to the council’s new Digital Strategy (here), some 80% of premises in Essex will also have access to gigabit-capable broadband speeds by the end of 2023 (currently it’s upwards of 60%), and their immediate goal is to push that to over 85% by 2025 – as aligned with the national Project Gigabit target.

However, we suspect that the key focus of this voucher top-up will actually be on tackling the c.8,000 or so premises in the county that, come the end of 2023, will still be unable to access even “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) speeds.