CityFibre has announced it will offer businesses free connections to its internet services for the next three weeks - as long as they're situated in Aberdeen, Coventry, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Peterborough and York.
CityFibre said it decided to waive the cost of connection - which can cost up to 2500 - because the government stopped its voucher scheme last week, which could have potentially stopped prospective customers signing up to superfast broadband services.
"We were great supporters of the government's connection voucher scheme as a catalyst to encourage businesses to upgrade to ultra-fast services and more modern pure fibre networks," James Thomas, director of operations at CityFibre said.
40,000 businesses signed up to the government's voucher scheme, which allowed small businesses to have connection costs of up to 3000 covered by the Government's 150 million "Super Connected Cities" programme to obtain faster and better broadband.
It was launched in December 2013 for companies based in Belfast, Salford, Portsmouth, Cardiff, Derby, Bristol, Edinburgh, Newport, London and Manchester, with an additional 12 cities added to the scheme in early 2014.
The government halted the scheme because the money put aside to fund the initiative has run dry following high demand from businesses.
"We are delighted to be able to help those businesses that have missed out on the voucher, giving them a final chance to get connected to transformational services on future-proof pure fibre infrastructure in the cities we serve," Thomas continued.
CityFibre's free connection offer is available to up to 55,000 businesses within reach of the company's project city networks and will be offered on any new connections up to November 5th.
