UK-based Gigaclear, an operator dedicated to building and operating fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband networks in rural communities, has announced that it has successfully completed a new round of equity financing. In a press release confirming the development, Gigaclear revealed that it has raised GBP6.5 million (USD10 million) in new funds from both existing and new institutional and private shareholders, with the CF Woodford Equity Income Fund adding to its initial GBP5 million investment from July 2014, and Forward Private Equity becoming the company’s second institutional shareholder. Following this latest round of funding, Gigaclear is said to have more than 100 private and institutional shareholders.
The additional investment will reportedly allow Gigaclear to continue to expand its footprint and bring ‘ultrafast’ broadband to thousands of customers in rural areas, as it looks to bring ‘high-quality, dependable broadband connectivity’ to the UK’s rural population at symmetric speeds of up to 1Gbps. With the operator saying it now has a pipeline of several hundred rural communities looking for fast and reliable broadband, it currently owns and operates 17 rural fibre networks across Oxfordshire, Kent and Rutland, while there are a further 20 under construction across Oxfordshire, Kent, Rutland, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.