Broadband ISP Brillband Secures £475,000 Investment Boost

Glasgow-based ISP Brillband, which at its launch last year (here) chose to quirkily describe itself as the “world’s first … app-based broadband provider“, has secured an additional £475k investment from “digital infrastructure banking experts based in Australia and Norway-based angel investors” to help expand across the UK.

In case anybody has forgotten, Brillband currently only sells Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband packages over CityFibre’s network in Scotland. At launch this was only available to parts of Glasgow and Renfrewshire, but they’ve since gone live across areas of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness and Stirling to match CityFibre’s current footprint.

The new investment is said to value the company at £5.4m, although valuing a new ISP before it’s had time to build a strong customer base – in this already over-crowded market of broadband providers – is not a task for the faint of heart. The provider needs to be given time to show that it can break into the market successfully, ideally without breaking itself in the process.

The new funding will enable the provider to expand their availability across the rest of CityFibre’s network, which current covers 2.5 million UK premises (2.2m Ready for Service) and aims to reach 8 million by around the end of 2025. Brillband’s Founder and CEO, Duncan Di Biase, has also talked about expanding into Europe by 2025.

Duncan Di Biase said (Insider):

“Our investors believe in the brand we have built, our purpose, the people behind it and the potential for Brillband.

Our software-based model creates agility competitors reliant on traditional copper infrastructure do not have – legacy networks and infrastructure mean the big providers would need to invest hundreds of millions to move as fast and as far as we can.

2023 will be a huge year for Brillband, and we have major announcements on the horizon.”

As for the service itself, Brillband has just one single 900Mbps package that costs £35 a month on an 18-month contract term, plus a one-off £35 set-up fee and the first month of service is “free“. The package includes one of Amazon’s eero 6 mesh WiFi routers. But take note that we’ve been unable to confirm whether Brillband is a member of an Ofcom approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider, as is normally required.