News
The ISP is the latest broadband provider to benefit from the surge in fibre investments in the UK, with the company aiming to reach half a million premises with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) in the next three years
Today, UK altnet Borderlink has announced that it has received a further £164 million in order to accelerate and expand its FTTP rollout across Northern England and Southern Scotland.
Founded in 2017, Borderlink was established to help provide broadband services to the areas surrounding the Scottish Borders, particularly in the more rural areas currently underserved by other operators. Since then, the company has grown a wireless network that spans around 3,5000 square kilometres and includes over 100 relay systems.
However, the company also had full fibre ambitions, that scale of which was not full appreciated until April last year, when Borderlink secured £10.5 million in funding from the Gresham House Investment Fund for the deployment of 10Gbps-capable FTTP. By October, the initial deployment strategy had been announced, with the first places to receive FTTP listed as parts of the East Lothian, Mid Lothian and Angus regions in Scotland.
At the time, the company was targeting 100,000 premises with the fibre technology.
Now, it seems that Borderlink’s rollout may scale up once again, with the Gresham House investing a further £164 million to expand the rollout.
“This investment allows us to bring GoFibre broadband to the people who have been left behind by the larger networks, ensuring that those in rural areas and towns have the ability to access the best broadband speeds and live their digital lives fully,” said Borderlink CEO, Alex Cacciamani.
Borderlink have scaled up their rollout targets accordingly, now aiming for 500,000 local homes to access gigabit-capable speeds over the next three years.
As part of this expansion, the company will hire an additional 100 employees, taking their total number to 200.
Borderlink is the latest in a large number of UK altnets to have secured additional funding in recent months. Just last week, for example, Truespeed announced it had secured a further £100 million for its own FTTP rollout.
What role does gigabit fibre have to play in helping to close the North-South divide in the UK? Is the UK’s fibre growth happening unequally? Find out what the operators think at this year’s inaugural Connected North conference
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