Wildanet’s FTTP Broadband Build Boosted by New £50m Investment

Rural broadband ISP Wildanet, which deploying a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of Cornwall and Devon in South West England, has today announced that existing investor Gresham House will pump another £50 million into the provider to help support their UK expansion.

Just to recap. Wildanet secured their first £50m from the Gresham House British Strategic Investment Infrastructure Fund (BSIF) in 2020 and, at the start of this year, they followed that up by scooping a £36m Project Gigabit contract to cover another 19,250 premises across rural parts of Cornwall (here) to complement their commercial build. In addition, they recently named 9 new locations in Devon for their rollout (here).

The extra funding of £50m being announced today (total of £100m) is intended to support their significant rollout in Cornwall, as well as the work they’re doing in more than 15 areas across Devon. The provider has so far also created more than 180 direct jobs, with plans to recruit up to a further 200.

Wildanet expects to add more than 50,000 rural ready for service (RFS) premises to their full fibre network by the end of 2023, which will add to the 60,000 “wireless connections” already available across Cornwall and Devon (it’s unclear if they mean customer connections or premises passed on the wireless figure, but we suspect the latter).

Helen Wylde, Wildanet CEO, said:

“This latest investment will allow Wildanet to bring forward the timing of its current rollout plans and target new areas across both counties, including some of the most challenging, remote locations bypassed in previous rollouts by major telecoms operators.

For Wildanet to secure such significant private equity funding, in today’s challenging economic and investment environment, stands out as a demonstration of real confidence in our values, our strategy and our delivery to date.”

Simon Adcock, Gresham House Co-Fund Manager for Sustainable Infrastructure, said:

“Over the past two years, Wildanet has had a transformative impact on communities across Cornwall, creating a truly gigabit-capable network that is both vastly superior to and materially more energy efficient than copper-based broadband. This is critical infrastructure that will enable the South West to benefit from the digital transformation, equating to an economic value of £70mn per year for Cornwall alone out to 2030. We are delighted to be supporting the Wildanet team on these projects.”

Full fibre customers typically pay from £39.99 per month (currently discounted to £25) to receive a 200Mbps (100Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with free installation, which rises to £59.99 if you want their top 900Mbps (400Mbps upload) package. Wilanet also offers a cheap social tariff for those on ‘Universal Credit‘, which costs £20 per month on a 12-month contract for downloads of 30-100Mbps and uploads of 6-50Mbps.