Huge £130m Boost for Grain’s UK FTTP Broadband Rollout
Cumbria-based network builder and broadband ISP Grain (Grain Connect) has today announced that they’ve secured an additional £130 million of funding to help “accelerate” their ongoing rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the United Kingdom.
The provider has so far announced full fibre broadband deployments across nearly 50 towns and cities, including locations such as Hull, Leicester, Liverpool, Accrington, Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Hartlepool, Newport, Sunderland, Blackburn and many more.
In short, today’s announcement includes funding via a £110m bank facility, with an initial tranche of £40m from German Landesbank Nord L/B. In order to complement Nord/LB’s debt financing, some £21m of additional equity is also being invested by existing shareholders – Equitix, Albion Capital and Pinnacle Group.
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The funding, which is on top of the £90m previously raised by Grain, brings the total capital to invest in the business to over £200m. The provider further states that they’ve grown a lot in the past year and now employ over 100 “new people“, including engineers and sales representatives. Not to mention that they recently opened a new Head Office in Carlisle.
Grain’s Chief Financial Officer, Roland Barzegar, said:
“This further investment in Grain will see us accelerate the rollout already underway across the country. We have proven that our model of providing fast, reliable and great value broadband is working, and customers are happy that they have more choice outside of the national broadband providers.
Our investors have helped us to bring to life the vision for the business and share in our excitement for the brand, and what we can achieve. The additional bank facility and partnership with Nord L/B cements our place as one of the leading alt-nets in the country.”
However, despite the positive news, it remains unclear how much progress has been made on Grain’s physical build. The operator’s decision to roll out in many locations that are already very competitive is another challenge, since this tends to make it harder to grow take-up. Nevertheless, Grain’s investors have today given the operator a huge vote of confidence, which would appear to bode well for their future prospects.
Customers of the regular service, once live, normally pay from just £25.99 per month for a symmetric 100Mbps package on a 12-month term (currently discounted to £17.99), which goes up to just £49.99 for their top 900Mbps plan (discounted to just £29.99). All of these packages come with unlimited usage, free installation, a router and a pledge to ensure “no in-contract price rises.” The ISP also has a social tariff for those on benefits.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’m moving into a new build this April, and Grain are one of the providers, in addition to Openreach. Sadly, I just can’t go near them since they operate GC-NAT due to not having enough IPv4 addresses, not offering the option to purchase a static IP, and not running IPv6 yet. Does anyone have any inside information on whether IPv6 is being worked on within Grain?
You could use the VPN service provided by AAISP and just route traffic you *need* the IPv4, for? There’s other ways to do this but this is just the first that popped into my head.
I believe they are working on this or testing it rather. I contacted them about it. Worth getting in contact with them, especially if you can get them in your area. They are really affordable & no price rises in contract.
They’ve built like 2 streets in my town and then nothing since. Seems an awfully inefficient way to go about it, but what do I know!
The same in Weston-super-Mare, just 2 roads. They are using standard 96mm duct with tees on pavements and will have to work round Cityfibre and Virgin Media microduct. Cabinets have an external padlock.
Grain are building near me in Blackpool currently, on another frustratingly small area – and one that’s due to get both Cityfibre and Openreach in the next few years.
I asked if they were coming north to Northumberland as they’re building in North Tyneside now.
They said no which is disappointing? Especially for a Cumbria based company.
There’s loads of areas here with high population density and no option but BT FTTC.
The build in North Tyneside has BT, Virgin and Citylink already so why they’d go there I’ve no idea.
Working in my area now.left flag stones sticking up and not fixed down properly all over.and right outside my house.i can see a lot of claims going in .as accidents waiting to happen on every street they have dug up in my area. Please get this sorted grain. Other companies come along these streets and dig up for what ever reason but never leave a mess the way grain has health and safety has not been considered at all ..
When will Grain be available in North Shields
It is. Although only in few small areas currently. Queen Alex Road, Chirton and a few others.