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THREE Hampshire firms are among the first in the country to get thousands of pounds of Government cash to boost their broadband.

Corrotherm, Lawson HIS and the CSA Recruitment Group were the first Southampton firms to win vouchers for £3,000 from the Government's new voucher scheme.

They have been formally handed the cheques for work to connect their businesses up to superfast broadband, and the city council is urging more the follow suit.

As part of the scheme small and medium-sized companies employing up to 249 people can bid for up to £3,000, with the vouchers available until March 31.

The city council will assess every company's application and then administer the funding, with Corrotherm, Lawson HIS and CSA Recruitment Group all receiving their funding within two weeks of applying.

Jan Ward, chief executive at Corrotherm, said: “Superfast broadband is important to the growth of our business. We are in the oil and gas sector, and are facing significant competition globally. We have locations in eight countries and internet-based communications are key to our daily operations; both internally and with customers and suppliers.

"The voucher scheme will enable us to upgrade our connection, which we otherwise would not be able to consider in the current market.”

Richard Brown, IT manager at Lawson HIS, said: "The connection voucher scheme will help us install a new leased line that will increase our download speed by over 250 per cent, and our upload speed by over 3000 per cent, with the capacity to increase our speeds even more if we need it.

"The benefit of this to our 30 staff will be enormous after suffering under our old ADSL connection, especially those interacting with customers on our website."

The operations manager at CMA Recruitment Group, Neil Phillips, said: “Our Southampton site hosts an integral part of our IT infrastructure, both locally and for the wider CMA Recruitment Group operations.

"The connection voucher scheme has afforded us the opportunity to invest in the very latest MPLS network providing increased speeds and platform reliability, key to any business today operating at the forefront of its market. The application process was simple and I’d recommend all to take advantage of this fantastic scheme.”

The city council's chief executive, Dawn Baxendale, said: "There are a phenomenal number of businesses that could be increasing their productivity and improving their interactions with customers, and ultimately, making more money.

“We know that as a city we are doing really well to grow and expand our economy, and it’s because of the hard graft of our local businesses. With this government-backed scheme, we can now support businesses to achieve even more for themselves and our city, with the introduction of this superfast broadband connection voucher scheme. It’s up to £3,000 of free money.”