Rural Full Fibre Broadband ISP Gigaclear Publish Annual UK Accounts
Abingdon-based alternative network Gigaclear, which have built a full fibre (FTTP) network across 618,000 premises in rural parts of England and is home to 170,000 customers, has published their annual accounts after lenders recently took control of the business (here). The results reveal that their c.£963m senior debt facility was revised to a principal amount of £575m (shrinking by £388m).
In case anybody has forgotten. Gigaclear was previously owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company had investment commitments estimated to be worth up to around £1.1bn (here) and in late 2023 secured a £1.5bn debt facility (here). At the end of 2025 a consortium of the provider’s existing banks then agreed to pump “at least” £80m of new funding into the company (here).
However, in April 2026, everything changed after the provider’s lenders took control of the business. At that point ownership of the company transferred to a consortium of ABN AMRO, Natwest and the UK taxpayer-backed National Wealth Fund (NWF), which involved a “substantial deleveraging and reduces the debt service requirement” (the lenders took a significant haircut on the company’s debt pile).
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The company’s shares were then transferred to Buzz Holdco Limited, which is owned by the same consortium of institutional investors. Gigaclear’s latest results to the end of 2025 now show that their c.£963m senior debt facility was amended and restated, as part of the aforementioned change, to reflect a revised principal amount of £575m (a shrinkage of £388m).
The outcome came after Gigaclear had been suffering from many of the same strains as other alternative networks (altnets). In response, they’d already had to scale-back their network builds and cut jobs, due to the pressures from high interest rates, rising build costs and a highly competitive environment (here and here); nobody ever said building fibre optic cables into remote rural areas was either easy or cheap.
Gigaclear’s Results to the End of 2025 (Key Figures)
➤ Averaged total number of staff 654 (2024: 779)
➤ Revenue up 37% to £64.9m (2024: £47.2m)
➤ Loss for the year (exc. fair value change of interest rate swaps) was £152m (2024: £242.6m). The reduction was primarily due to no impairment of property, plant and equipment in 2025
➤ Net debt of £997.9m (2024: £870.2m) – mostly due to network expansion
➤ Premises passed (Ready for Service) of 618,000 (2024: 588,000)
➤ Live customers of 165,000 (2024: 134,000)
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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Even after writing off part of the debt down to £585million, that still leaves debt of £3382.35p per active connection. Even if take up reached 50% it’d still be £1860.84p.
I think there’s still plenty more pain to come.
That will make BTivor happy, less competition for his BT.
At current interest rates it’s £70 a year to cover just the debt interest on each connection
Do you mean per prem passed? Per active connection at 7% or so, is £200 per customer per month, mental.
It looks like the debts are now £575m at SONIA + 4% and another £80m at SONIA + 1.75%. SONIA is currently 3.73%, which means £48.8m per annum in interest.
For 618k premises passed: £79 per annum per premises passed
For 170k customers: £287 per annum per customer
The reduced debt is £1,060 per premises passed, which is higher than the apparent market value of altnet assets. So the lenders now own the company, but their equity holding is still pretty much worthless.
Maybe the lenders could not agree on the extent to which their various loans are impaired, but I doubt they will be able to sell or merge the business until they agree to write off more debt.