Business VoIP could be available to more companies across the UK following news that £50 million is to be spent immediately on stepping up superfast broadband installations.
The £50 million broadband development allocation, announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, is only the first step in a broader investment of £530 million of public funds planned between now and 2015 for those geographical areas deemed most likely to be ignored by private broadband suppliers.
According to the Chancellor, the £50 million spend will bring high speed internet to ‘800,000 homes and businesses’.
It is expected that the new cable installations will allow companies to benefit from broadband speeds as high as 100 mbps (megabits per second).
The news will be welcomed by those companies wishing to take advantage of value added high speed broadband services such as business VoIP (voice over internet protocol).
One of the main benefits of installing business VoIP is that it allows phone calls to be made and received much more cheaply over the internet rather than via the more expensive tariffs of conventional telephone lines.
The decision on where to install the new broadband cables will be based on an assessment of competitive bids supplied by local authorities to the Government organisation, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).
More good news is on the way beyond 2015 when an additional £300 million is expected to be used to expand high speed broadband connections even further across the country. Funding for this second stage of broadband development will, it is anticipated, be taken out of television licence revenue.
The new initiatives follow on from a broad plan announced by the Government in December under the name, Britain’s Superfast Broadband Future.
According to Mr Osborne, the initiatives are intended to provide the UK with ‘the best superfast broadband network in Europe’.
