Broadway Partners Get GBP145m for UK Rollout of Gigabit Fibre

Broadway Partners (ISP Broadway Broadband) has today secured a huge investment of £145m from Downing LLP to fuel their rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which aspires to cover 250,000 homes and businesses by 2025 – mostly across rural parts of Scotland and Wales.

The operator, which started life in 2016 by deploying Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) networks in remote rural communities, has more recently begun to deploy a growing number of full fibre networks across multiple villages in rural parts of Wales. Some of their existing networks can be found in parts of Arran, Inverness-shire, Ayrshire, Stirlingshire, Perth & Kinross, Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire.

Last year Broadway spoke of a tentative plan to extend their “gigabit-capable … fibre” network to cover 500,000 UK homes and businesses by the end of 2022 (here), which at the time seemed rather optimistic. By comparison, today’s new “aspiration” of reaching 250,000 premises by 2025, which is backed by some solid investment, seems much more viable.

As part of that, the provider intends to extend their fibre optic cables into new communities across parts of Powys, Ceredigion, and Carmarthenshire in Wales.

Michael Armitage, CEO of Broadway Partners, said:

“The investment from Downing LLP will enable Broadway Partners to accelerate its rural broadband programme, offering vital connectivity to businesses and households in parts of the country that other providers can’t reach. We are fortunate to have had Souter Investments as our provider of funding and wise counsel since 2018, and their expertise and guidance have been invaluable as we have grown from ambitious start-up to even more ambitious challenger. We are looking forward to the next phase of our mission with Downing with confidence and optimism.”

Sean Moore, Downing LLP, said:

“We’re delighted to be working with Broadway Partners to accelerate its plans to bring full fibre into Wales and Scotland. We believe that digital infrastructure, particularly in rural communities, is a key enabler of economic growth and social well-being within the communities that it serves. Specifically, gigabit-capable fibre provides a future-proof solution, ensuring that the targeted towns and villages are not left behind. We look forward to supporting the team with their growth ambitions over the coming years.”

Sadly, Broadway doesn’t say precisely how many premises their full fibre network has already reached, but they did offer a vague reference to having covered “thousands of premises.” The biggest challenge for Broadway is that they’re likely to face growing competition from rival FTTP builds in Wales by operators such as Openreach, Voneus, Ogi (Spectrum Internet) and others.

A huge amount of investment is going toward full fibre builds’ and some of these networks will inevitably clash in the same areas.