Gigaclear looking to raise £300m in new funding - report

Fibre broadband network provider Gigaclear is reportedly looking to raise hundreds of millions of pounds of further funding to help roll out its expansion.

According to Sky News, Gigaclear is working with bankers at Rothschild to raise between £200m and £300m of additional capital for its rollout.

The capital raise, which could comprise a combination of debt and equity, is one of a string of attempts by alternative network providers - or altnets - to secure sufficient funding to build businesses of genuine scale, Sky said.

The market is led in terms of number of premises by BT's Openreach division, with Virgin Media 02 and CityFibre Holdings trailing behind it. Sky noted that like Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, G.Network and Community Fibre have raised substantial sums to fuel their expansion.

Gigaclear's network has a presence in 22 counties, and in May crossed the 300,000 premises threshold.

Founded in 2010, Gigaclear has already raised hundreds of millions of pounds from investors including Infracapital, the infrastructure investment arm of M&G.