ISP Borderlink Broadband Gets GBP10m Full Fibre Rollout Boost

UK ISP BorderLink, which covers parts of Southern Scotland and Northern England with their ultrafast wireless broadband (100Mbps+) network, has secured a major £10.5m funding boost from the Gresham House Investment Fund (BSIF) to help them deploy 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services.

At present most of the provider’s customers tend to reside along the Scottish Borders area, including some parts of Cumbria and Northumberland in England. Similarly, they have various depots and offices based at Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Kelso and Carlisle. But the operator also has plans to grow their network more widely across Scotland and Northern England.

Going forward the new investment will help them to focus on delivery of both rural and urban gigabit networks using “full fibre” (FTTP) technologies, which is expected to initially create 80 new skilled jobs. Apparently, this new network will be “capable of delivering speeds of up to 10Gbps to each subscriber,” although they don’t actually offer that top speed to homes, but the capability is there for the future.

Alex Cacciamani, Founder and CEO of Borderlink, said:

“Borderlink is a young and ambitious company and we have been enormously impressed by Gresham House’s BSIF team and look forward to working with them in delivering our growth plans.”

Peter Bachmann, Fund Manager of BSIF, said:

“Borderlink is an impressive company with a unique, technology driven approach that fits firmly into our central mission, which is delivering Sustainable Infrastructure throughout the UK. We are looking forward to supporting Alex and his team in delivering their ambitious plans.”

Unfortunately, what today’s announcement doesn’t give us is any idea of the future rollout plan, such as how many premises will benefit from the FTTP build, where and over what time-scale.

Customers currently pay from £26 per month for an unlimited 120Mbps (50Mbps upload) package on Borderlink’s Gigabit Fibre Broadband service and this goes up to £65 for their top 600Mbps (50Mbps) tier.