Altnet Broadband ISP Gigabit IQ Starts UK Crowdfund to Raise £270,000
Internet access and online security provider Gigabit IQ (formerly Grayshott Gigabit) has officially launched their promised crowdfunding campaign, which aims to raise fresh investment of £270,000 to help grow and expand the business via the “next generation of safe, reliable broadband for the country“.
Readers might recall that we first covered Gigabit IQ’s then tentative plan back in October 2025 (here). At the time we remarked that the idea of crowdfunding in this way was rather unusual for a broadband provider and isn’t likely to scale as well as shares or direct investment agreements (e.g. private equity, debt, bank loans, public subsidy etc.), but it could still have some benefits, provided investors are willing to take the risk.
Speaking of risk, the original notification email from last year also rightly warned that this would be a “high risk investment” and one where those who make a commitment are “unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong“. All of this is very important because Gigabit IQ isn’t yet a large, familiar brand like some of the market’s other players.
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However, despite the challenges of such an approach, the provider has just informed ISPreview that they went live on Republic Europe last week with their first EIS-eligible (Enterprise Investment Scheme – tax relief) crowdfunding round to help them “scale nationally“. The pre-promotion work also seems to have paid off as, at the time of writing, some 40 investors have already committed £243,650 of the £270k target with 23 days left to run.
The campaign mentions the provider as having an “addressable reach” of 1.5 million homes, which we’re told reflects the “total capacity” of all the alternative wholesale fibre networks they currently work with to deliver their services (e.g. Freedom Fibre’s alternative FTTP network and others).
According to the details, the company appears to be offering Equity of 5.12% in the business, which is the percentage of the company’s shares being issued in return for the amount of investment raised. Individual investors can commit anything from as little as £50 (price of one share) and upwards, although unfortunately you have to sign up to the Republic Europe site to see all the details.
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The targeted level of funding (£270k) isn’t all that huge in today’s landscape of expensive broadband altnets and retail provider expansions, so it seems to be more focused on the development and promotion of their existing systems / platform. We’ll keep an eye on this one to see how it fares, although we’ve been told that, if successful, they may run more raises in the future (either on the same platform or via different approaches).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I have been bombarded with emails via my work email address which they have as my company is a supplier to them which I think is misuse of data.
If the banks won’t lend it and they want to crowd fund , the disclaimer states that this is not for a beginner investor and be prepared to lose your money !
Please provide your email to query@gigabitiq.com, so that we can take you off the mailing list – or just unsubscribe to the mail that has been sent to your company address.
All crowdfunding is regulated by the FCA, and so any investment is subject to risk, and anyone who signs up to any investment on any crowdfunding platform is assessed so that they understand the risk for their investment.
This is Gigabit IQ’s first fundraise, we have bootstrapped our business to date with our own funds, and unlike other altnets/isp’s we didn’t raise from institutional investors or banks.
I have reported it as spam so no need to provide it to you .
I don’t think an unsolicited request for money sent to a company that is a supplier of yours is very professional . I don’t recognise your name as someone that works there as let’s be honest it’s a small company . However I only live round the corner so happy to pop in and discuss it over a cuppa if you don’t understand professional boundaries.
Best of luck to them, but as they say on Dragon’s Den – I’m out!
Not interested in being one of the crowd, Good luck with this. probably need it!
The product requires parents to take responsibility for their children’s internet usage. At the same time the government is telling them they don’t have to. For that reason, I, too, am out.
The Social Media Ban proposed by the government and other political parties won’t work practically, as we have seen that even with age verification requirements for certain sites, children bypass with VPN’s and other workarounds. Plus, please note, the Australia model which is the precursor for our political parties to act – only bans certain social media apps, not all – see our blog on which are covered, and what is a more effective way to protect children online.
https://www.gigabitiq.com/why-social-media-bans-dont-protect-children-online/
Our approach at Gigabit IQ is to provide parents with opt-in parental controls (with our FamilyGuard+ solution), so that Parents take control to set age based content filters, block VPN’s, block/limit social media for their children individually, rather than leave this to the government to police the internet.
Oh I do agree tools like this are the real solution to children’s online safety. But as long as the government is telling parents they have don’t have to take any responsibility I can’t see them getting much traction.
Not that stupid idea, I would consider if it was in my area.