Gigaclear, a UK-based provider of fibre-to-the-premises networks in rural communities, said it has raised £6.5 million in new funds from a new round of equity financing to help drive the deployment of broadband networks with speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
The company said the additional investment would allow it to further expand its footprint to thousands of customers in rural areas, stepping up its challenge to BT. The UK incumbent in January said it plans to deploy G.fast technology in two trial locations this summer, with a target of providing 500 Mbps to most of the UK within a decade.
Gigaclear CEO Matthew Hare said the company is determined to accelerate its delivery of ultrafast broadband and welcomed the strong support from existing and new shareholders.
“Rural communities across the UK realise that they can leapfrog a whole generation of technology with a new, ultrafast, pure fibre network that can scale to thousands of megabits per second, future proofing the communities for many many years and allowing them, even today, to reap benefits not yet available to many towns and cities in the UK,” Hare said.
The company currently owns and operates 17 rural fibre networks across Oxfordshire, Kent and Rutland, and has 20 under construction across Oxfordshire, Kent, Rutland, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.
Gigaclear’s announcement also came on the same day that Virgin Media and parent company Liberty Global announced what they described as the “largest investment in the UK’s infrastructure in a decade”.
Under “Project Lightning”, the cable operator plans to invest £3 billion in connecting around 4 million new homes and businesses over the next five years.
The moves by both Gigaclear and Virgin Media will no doubt be welcomed by the UK government, which has set a target of 95% of premises receiving superfast broadband by 2017.
A recent report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on rural broadband and digital-only services expressed concerns that rural communities in the UK are at risk of becoming the “have nots” in a superfast broadband world, and called for a target date for when the last 5% of premises will obtain access to superfast broadband coverage.
