Toob Gets GBP87.5m Funding to Boost UK FTTP Broadband Rollout

New ISP toob, which is busy building a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of England, has today secured “up to” £87.5m of new funding from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund and accelerated their target to reach 1 million UK premises by 2027 (previously it was 2031).

At present the operator, which was originally backed by an initial investment of £75m from funds advised by the Amber Infrastructure Group (here), is building FTTP across the Hampshire city of Southampton (costing c.£50m to cover 100,000 premises by the end of 2022) and nearby towns of Aldershot, Eastleigh and Chandler’s Ford. Not to mention the Surrey towns of Camberley and Frimley. On top of that they’re also building across Ash, Green, Guildford, Mytchett, West Byfleet and Woking (here).

The good news today is that toob has just secured another major funding boost, worth “up to” £87.5 million, from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (the ISP was advised by Jefferies in this capital raise). The new deal appears to have accelerated their rollout plans and moved their coverage target for 1 million premises passed (in the South of England) forward, from 2031 to 2027.

The Sequoia fund is a familiar one on these pages because they recently injected £60m into another alternative full fibre network provider, LightSpeed Broadband, which is busy building somewhat further north of toob’s patch (here). No doubt Sequoia will be keen for both builds to remain complementary, focusing on different counties etc.

Toob’s CEO, Nick Parbutt, said:

“It is with great pleasure that we can announce we have secured this investment which will help accelerate our network deployment into 2022 and beyond. With this investment in place we will expand into more towns across the South of England, bringing the benefits of full-fibre broadband to more families, businesses and communities.”

Charles-Olivier Douala, VP at Sequoia, added:

“We are delighted to provide this facility to toob, which will be used to connect towns across the South of England to full-fibre broadband and improve their access to reliable and fast internet which will be critical for both households and businesses going forward.”

The news comes shortly after toob became the subject of much takeover speculation, thanks to CityFibre (here), and today’s news is unlikely to dampen that. Customers of the service typically pay just £25 per month for the first 18-months of service (£29 thereafter) to get an unlimited 900Mbps (symmetric) broadband package with an included wireless router, which comes with free installation.