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UK cities and businesses should follow Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s lead in taking advantage of the government’s Superfast Cities campaign, says Cloud Telephones.
The specialist VoIP and connectivity services aggregator has called on other businesses to go digital and adopt the campaign, under which they can claim Connection Vouchers worth up to £3,000.
It says that IT resellers have a huge ‘under-exploited’ opportunity to install high-speed broadband and hosted IP voice services in businesses, and should make sure their SMB customers know about the scheme.
"The success of the Go Digital programme in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which has seen more than 430 businesses in Newcastle, Gateshead and North Tyneside getting involved, shows just how effective and far-reaching the scheme can be," Cloud Telephones said in a statement.
"But while this scheme is companies in the North East to get enabled for superfast connections, businesses all over the UK can apply for the £3,000 grant."
The scheme is active in 50 cities and urban areas across the UK – more information can be found at www.cloudtelephones.co.uk/departments/#super-connected-cities.
Resellers can benefit massively if they encourage businesses in their own city or town to take advantage of the government grant, says John Carter, MD of Cloud Telephones.
“What’s happening in the North East can happen all over the country – from Plymouth to Aberdeen and from Derry to Southend-on-Sea," he said. "The Connection Voucher scheme provides a really great incentive for SMBs to upgrade to fibre broadband, as it effectively costs the business nothing.
"Resellers can take advantage of that to sign-up new customers and that’s vitally important because that connection will soon become the absolute lifeline for all those businesses as they adopt hosted VoIP and other cloud-based apps and services.
"Resellers who provide that connection are in pole position to deliver those services and draw monthly recurring revenues from every single customer and seat they sign up.”
Cloud Telephones has already been working with resellers to drive awareness and seed business through the Connection Voucher scheme. It has managed hundreds of sign-ups so far but believes there can be much more.
Carter added: “The 430 businesses in the North East are just the tip of the iceberg in that region alone. There are more than five million SMBs in the UK and there is potential to deliver fibre connections, VoIP and other services to every single one of them.”
"We are constantly amazed at how under-exploited this opportunity is even now, more than 18 months after it was introduced. We are also surprised at how few resellers take the opportunity to sell hosted VoIP into customers who have superfast broadband.
"It’s is a no-brainer for the SMB as it gives them a fixed, guaranteed cost per line every month and it’s also a no-brainer for the reseller as they get commission on the initial sale and a monthly recurring income too.”
Cloud Telephones is a services distributor that generates leads before passing a business to a reseller, in order for them to offer managed services direct. For more info, call 0844 561 6653 or visit www.cloudtelephones.co.uk.
