The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s latest UK budget has included a pledge to develop 21 new enterprise zones across the country which will all have the capacity to adopt modern commercial-friendly technologies such as business VoIP.
The availability of technologies such as business VoIP in the new zones will be made possible through a promised roll out of high-speed broadband in each area.
With such VoIP telephony capacity, companies no longer have to pay expensive phone call tariffs to traditional telecommunication line suppliers. Instead they pay much cheaper call rates to a VoIP provider. The cumulative impact of such cheaper calls on a company’s bottom line can be considerable.
VoIP however does not only lead to cheaper phone calls; it can help improve business efficiencies by making it easier, for example, to add new extensions and to re-route lines; or to make and receive calls anywhere where there is an internet connection.
Announcing the first of the new enterprise zones – in areas within Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, London, the North East, the Black Country, the West of England, and the Tees Valley – the Chancellor, George Osborne, said that the introduction of ‘superfast broadband ‘would be incentivised in these areas, and that, where necessary, public funding would be used to support its implementation.
As well as the introduction of high speed broadband the new enterprise zones will also benefit from the relaxation of both taxation and building planning requirements.
Ten further new enterprise zones are to be established in the near future on the basis of winning tenders from local authorities.
