After moving his IT support company, Roding Tech to a new business park in Harlow, Martin Bristow knew he was going to need a better broadband connection. The Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) connection was adequate, but the service/speeds would be unreliable and upload speeds were poor. FTTC involves new fibre cables being installed from the exchange to a green street cabinet. Existing copper then runs from the cabinet to the property. FTTC is capable of providing speeds up to 80Mbps, but speeds will start to deteriorate the further away from the cabinet the properties are located.
“The internet would sometimes drop out when calling customers using VOIP, which is embarrassing from a business point of view. We also had to use hosted services for uploading big files to customers, because of the slow upload speed,” Martin said.
After hearing about the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) from internet service provider Aspire, Martin decided to ask for a quote. The GBVS is a government scheme aimed at increasing access to full fibre broadband networks. The scheme is aimed at businesses and residents as part of a group project, as long as businesses are the main beneficiary. Individual businesses can claim up to £2,500 towards the cost of connection, and residents £500. Individual vouchers can be pooled together for group projects.
After ordering the voucher in February 2019 there were a few complications with the installation, including requirements for roadworks and wayleaves. But despite the additional challenges, three months later and at no extra cost on top of the voucher, Roding Tech is now connected to full fibre broadband. Martin and his team now have access to speeds of 100Mbps which allows them to upload large files without the need for external hosting services, keep their files safe in the Cloud and call customers without the line dropping out. The company also paid to add infrastructure which has allowed the line to be split into 15 sublets - meaning 15 different businesses, including Roding Tech can now benefit from ultrafast broadband.
“As new tenants move into the business park, I contact them to see if they need faster broadband. The money we spent on the hardware and installation fees to split the line has now been recouped, so we don’t have to pay for our own line,” Martin said.
When asked if he would recommend the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme to others, Martin said: “Certainly, if people are looking to move into the cloud and want a reliable, faster connection - it's a no brainer. I can’t imagine going back to where we were before!”