Gigaclear CEO Matthew Hare Exits as ISP Aims for 350K FTTP Premises

The CEO of alternative network ISP Gigaclear, Matthew Hare, has today announced that he is stepping down after 8 years of building Gigabit capable fibre optic (FTTP) broadband networks to rural parts of the UK. The company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Mike Surrey, will become its interim CEO.

Under Matthew’s stewardship the once tiny ISP has grown significantly and today their 1Gbps+ Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network covers more than 65,000 rural homes and businesses (c.25% take-up) across 20 counties in England. Many of those have stemmed from state aid supported contract wins as part of the Government’s wider Broadband Delivery UK scheme. The ISP now aims to cover over 350,000 premises by 2021.

Gigaclear’s progress has not gone unnoticed and earlier this year the M&G Investment Management fund made its move to purchase the ISP for £270 million (here), which was backed by the provider’s largest shareholder Infracapital (43.2% holding). The latter is also supporting TalkTalk’s £3bn plan to make FTTP/H available to 3 million UK premises (here).

Such a huge deal tends to result in a shake-up of company management and so we shouldn’t be too surprised at today’s news.

Charles McGregor, Independent Chairman of Gigaclear, said:

“Having built Gigaclear into the most successful rural broadband company in the UK, Matthew has secured its financial future with the backing of institutional investors Infracapital and Railpen. I thank Matthew for his vision, energy and all the passion that he has brought to Gigaclear, and for setting the business on a course that will revolutionise the lives of millions of people across rural Britain.”

Stephen Nelson, Asset Management Director of Infracapital, said:

“We have worked closely with Matthew since our first investment in Gigaclear in 2015 and would like to thank him for the considerable amount he has achieved. The opportunity for Gigaclear remains very exciting and we are fortunate to have in Mike Surrey a proven leader with deep knowledge of the company and its opportunities.

We look forward to supporting Mike and the team in delivering the vision of bringing ultrafast, full fibre connectivity to rural Britain.”

Meanwhile Mike Surrey has pledged to “accelerate the pace of full fibre delivery to those communities to which we are committed,” although such management changes can also result in different strategies and we’ll be keeping an eye out to see how the company evolves. Nevertheless it shouldn’t be forgotten that Gigaclear are currently in the running for some other big rural contracts, such as R100 in Scotland.

Despite that we’ve long predicted that eventually the full fibre market will have to consolidate, which means that many of the medium sized FTTP/H/B providers like Gigaclear could end up being merged into much larger operations (assuming competition follows its natural course and isn’t interrupted by government policy changes).