Zzoomm’s UK Gigabit Fibre Rollout Boosted by GBP100m Investment

UK ISP Zzoomm has today secured a significant £100m investment (debt facility) boost from an international banking consortium, which will help the operator toward their target of deploying a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to reach 1 million UK premises in 85 towns by the end of 2025.

The provider, which until today had been primarily backed by an initial equity investment of £100m from Oaktree Capital Management (here), is currently focusing their rollout on semi-rural towns and parishes around parts of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Staffordshire, North Yorkshire and Cheshire (e.g. Henley-on-Thames, Hereford, Ascot, Northallerton, Cannock, Crewe, Sandhurst, Thirsk, Crowthorne etc.).

By comparison the latest investment boost reflects a £100m debt facility, which has been secured via a consortium of international banks led by ING Bank, with Hamburg Commercial Bank and Kommunalkredit Austria. The extra funding should help to “accelerate” Zzoomm’s rollout, although they’ll need to secure even more funding in the future to help reach their ultimate coverage target.

Apparently, plans for deployments across “several new towns” will also be announced in the “coming weeks“.

Matthew Hare, Zzoomm’s CEO, said:

“This new investment provides substantial additional capital to drive our network expansion plans forward at full speed. Our goal is to deliver brilliant broadband to the homes and business that we serve. With the support of our new banking partners, we can go further, faster, and bring Zzoomm Full Fibre happiness to many more people over the coming weeks, months and years.”

Residential customers on the new network typically pay from £29 per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (symmetric speed) package and that goes up to £99 if you want their top 2Gbps tier, which also happens to be one of the fastest home broadband packages available in the UK. Installation is free, and you get two Hubs to boost WiFi.

We think Zzoomm now has enough funding to reach around 300,000 premises, although this is a very rough guesstimate based on an assumption about how much they’re likely to be spending in different areas and allowing for other costs (support, office, data centres etc.). In any case it’s a significant build and one to watch, with plenty more years left to find the rest of the funding they need.