The scheme is active in 50 cities and urban areas across the UK. Resellers can benefit massively if they encourage businesses in their own city or town to take advantage of the government grant, says John Carter, Managing Director 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. 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. Carter says: “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.”
Carter is astonished, not only that more resellers are not promoting the voucher scheme, but also that so many are missing out on VoIP services business. “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.”