Neighbours can club together to claim £7,000 for broadband boost
RURAL neighbours will be able to club together to claim up to £7,000 towards the cost of having broadband installed, ministers announce today.
Councils have given a £22 million cash boost to a Government scheme to help ensure more remote parts of England have access to gigabit-capable broadband.
Around 250,000 homes in areas with some of the slowest speeds in the country are expected to be eligible for the extra money from 17 English councils, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
It is the latest step in the Government’s drive to bring gigabit-speed broadband to the whole of the UK in the next five years – a key election pledge from Boris Johnson.
The cash injection will go into the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, which is designed to subsidise the cost of building broadband networks in remote areas.
The vouchers originally covered costs up to £1,500 for homes and £3,500 for businesses, with any expenditure over this amount paid by the individuals.
It is hoped the new funding, however, will make the scheme more attractive to both members of the public and businesses.
Local authorities have topped up the grants by differing amounts, with the highest available to Oxford and Kent residents, who can claim £7,000 for installation.
Matt Warman, the digital infrastructure minister, is urging businesses and communities to apply for the vouchers. He said: “This Government is determined to connect every home and business to the fastest broadband speeds available from the Highlands to the Jurassic Coast.
“But we can only do this with collaboration at a local and national level so I’m delighted English councils have committed to pump more money into our voucher scheme to help rural communities get gigabit speed broadband.
“A quarter of all properties across the UK can now access these fast and reliable speeds, and we have earmarked a further £5 billion so rural towns and villages across the four nations can get the speeds they need to seize all the benefits of new technology.”
Bringing quicker internet speeds to rural regions took on a fresh urgency during the pandemic, as millions of people across the country were forced to work from home, requiring improved connections.
Gigabit broadband would make it possible to download a high-definition movie in less than 30 seconds with speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second.
So far, nearly 45,000 gigabit broadband vouchers, worth more than £90million, have been issued, according to the Government.
The Daily Telegraph’s Better Broadband campaign has been pushing ministers to improve connectivity to rural homes for the past four years.
Last month, Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, BT’S infrastructure arm, warned that the plan for full coverage by 2025 could degenerate into a “bureaucratic car crash”.
He said the complexity of the Government’s proposals could slow down the project, saying initial plans would see more than 1,000 contracts up for grabs for providers.