Gigaclear gets £111m to make rural broadband faster

Boutique broadband ISP Gigaclear has secured over £100 million to fund its expansion of full-fibre rural broadband networks across Britain’s countryside.

The investment will allow Gigaclear to accelerate the development of its ultrafast fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks across many new rural counties.

Gigaclear claim the new investment will be available to 150,000 premises by 2020 reaching across counties such as Rutland, Kent, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.

Gigaclear’s network is currently available to 42,000 rural properties and the firm recently hit 10,000 active customers.

Poor quality rural broadband still dominates tech headlines and it’s often down to customers to work out what they can do about it – satellite or mobile broadband?

Announcing the news Gigaclear’s CEO Matthew Hare said: “Full fibre is the future. This latest round of investment will enable Gigaclear to step up our speed of network delivery and is a clear signal of the confidence investors have in our continued expansion and success.”

Politicians argue that ISPs are not investing enough in rural broadband.

Hare continued: “Millions of rural homes and businesses across the country need better broadband and we want to reach as many of those in rural areas as quickly as possible.

“Our pure-fibre network transforms lives, by providing access to the fastest internet speeds to be found anywhere in the world and technologically future-proofing these rural communities for years to come.”

The investment comes at a time when the government has committed £600 million in public funds to support full-fibre networks, and alongside Ofcom’s decision to split up BT and its network engineering arm Openreach, to make the network more accessible to BT’s rivals.

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Railpen, a railways pension scheme, has invested £35 million in Gigaclear’s plans.

Investment director Paul Bishop said: “We are delighted that the company will be supporting local communities by bringing the benefits of best-in- class fibre-optic broadband to homes and businesses in new parts of the country.”