Lenders Take Control of Rural UK Full Fibre Broadband ISP Gigaclear UPDATE
Several key creditors of the indebted Abingdon-based alternative broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has built a full fibre (FTTP) network across 612,000 premises in rural parts of England and is home to 170,000 customers, will today formalise an agreement to take control of the business after earlier attempts to sell the company failed. But the lenders are expected to take a big haircut.
The provider, which still holds an aspiration to extend their network reach to 1 million UK premises, has been suffering from many of the same strains as other alternative networks (altnets). In response, they’ve already had to scale-back their network build and cut jobs, due to the pressures from high interest rates, rising build costs and a highly competitive environment (here and here). But nobody ever said building fibre optic cables into remote rural areas was either easy or cheap.
Suffice to say that funding has recently become somewhat of a hot topic for Gigaclear, particularly after reports emerged in November 2025 that they had begun hunting for a buyer (here). A consortium of the provider’s existing banks then followed that report by agreeing to pump “at least” £80 million of new funding into the company (here), which Gigaclear said meant it was now “fully funded to deliver its plans“.
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Nathan Rundle, CEO of Gigaclear, said in December 2025:
“There’s still more work to do to close the digital divide but combined with our achievement of EBITDA positivity earlier this year and strong customer growth, this funding reflects a business that is financially secure, operationally robust and focused on sustainable long-term delivery.”
The latest development – as covered by the FT (paywall), which also confirms an earlier report from January 2026 (here), reveals that 11 of Gigaclear’s lenders – including the UK taxpayer-backed National Wealth Fund (NWF), as well as banks such as NatWest and Lloyds – have taken control of Gigaclear from former shareholders Infracapital, Equitix and Railpen.
The official agreement is reportedly due to be finalised today and lenders are expected to take a significant haircut on the company’s near £1bn debt pile, which could amount to as much as 40% of their loans. Taxpayers are exposed to this because the NWF gave a £240m guarantee as part of a wider £1.5bn investment into the company during 2023.
Gigaclear’s CEO, Nathan Rundle, said:
“I am delighted that we now have a satisfactory resolution of the negotiations with our shareholders and lenders on how Gigaclear is funded, and I look forward to leading the company through this next phase of growth.
This new funding means we can continue with our plans to add more customers to our network, remaining fully focused on our goal to bridge the digital divide in rural Britain and deliver ultrafast, reliable broadband for homes and businesses that need it most.”
A National Wealth Fund spokesperson said:
“We continue to be supportive of the business. Digital and technology is a significant sector for the fund, with a particular focus on supporting altnets like Gigaclear, which are delivering Building Digital UK contracts under the government’s Project Gigabit programme.”
The expectation is that the company’s creditors, which have managed to put the company in a better position, albeit at some considerable cost (details yet to be revealed), will now attempt another sale process. None of this is expected to have an impact upon Gigaclear’s customers, which will continue to receive the same service, although struggling companies often have to cut costs and that can still impact quality in other ways.
Coming to this sort of arrangement is a difficult thing to pull off as nobody likes to lose money, but it does put Gigaclear in a better position for consolidation, and we may well see a few more indebted altnets going down a similar path during 2026, particularly if they fail to find a consolidation partner via more traditional approaches.
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UPDATE 7:16am
The official announcement has just been released, which expresses the change as reflecting the “successful completion of the recapitalisation of the company” and one that “significantly strengthens and deleverages Gigaclear’s balance sheet, providing the company with a robust capital structure and a fully funded business plan, underpinned by the new capital of £80m from its incoming shareholders secured in December 2025“.
As part of the recapitalisation, which was agreed unanimously by the company’s existing lenders and shareholders, ownership of the company has been transferred to a consortium of experienced institutional investors, including the National Wealth Fund, ABN AMRO and NatWest.
Gigaclears said they are EBITDA positive and “delivering on all key financial metrics with a clear path to cashflow positivity in the near future … Looking ahead, Gigaclear will continue expanding its customer base, investing in operational innovation and enhancing the customer experience through technologies such as AI-powered installation tools“.
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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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Not the first and certainly not the last time the investors/lenders take a haircut from the altnets. Mind you looking at the money being thrown at the AI companies in the US it’s probably going to end up looking like peanuts in comparison.
In this case the ‘investors’ being all of us, as taxpayers. And this will become a recurring theme on National Wealth Fund investments into altnets with fanciful business plans. It’s been an appalling waste of public money.
If you write off the debt is the underlying business viable
It will if the debt (and its repayment terms) is the main cause the business is technically failing. They indicate they are EBITDA positive, which suggests they are fundamentally in reasonable shape. It would be nice to know by how much, but if the margin was borderline then they likely wouldn’t be getting that new money and then this would be an administration or liquidation exercise rather than a restructuring. Of course, this is all going on while the negative economic impacts of the situation in the Middle East are still playing out and unresolved.
Without the debt the business wouldn’t exist.
And there goes the first of many.
It already happened to G.Network a few weeks ago. So not the first, but probably of many.
That will make the Openreach and BT fan boys happy on here like BT Ivor. The more that goes, the more people have to use Openreach iffy network, so shares go up for him.
There is one problem, a lot of places, in fact I think all places where Gigaclear is, there is no Openreach network, not anything that works. Partner was stuck with mobile network before Gigaclear, Openreach was not interested, did not pay.
Openreach are still building at a rapid rate until the end of this and unless their plans change will carry on doing so until 2030 (albeit at a slower rate), so where they haven’t overbuilt Gigaclear yet they may still do so.
All of these altnets are going to end up going bust.
It’s easy to make glib comments about another AltNet stuggling to be economially viable, but unless you’re one of the billionaire fund managers crying into your tea because you didn’t get the expected ROI, the existence of Gigaclear and the work the team have achieved over many years is surely something to be celebrated?
600k of our distant friends and neighbours can now access fibre broadband; Their old homes may be draughty and only accesible by an unpaved track but Gigaclear connected them anyway.
Don’t forget Gigaclear were one of the very first AltNets too, and also offered a dedicated fibre connection! (You won’t see many of them in the future). Their business model was never going to be easy – unlike alternatives who just target the highest density areas they can – but that’s all the more reason to commend them for taking on the challenge (and for the most part, succeeding).
Yes, mistakes and greed probably crept in along the way (like all businesses) but surely we can agree the UK is a better place with a company like Gigaclear operating in it, than had they just decided not to bother at all.
I hope they find a positive way forward and may their fibres be filled with photons for generations to come.
It’s easy to make glib comments about billionaire fund managers being the only victims here. Unfortunately it’s simply not true. We, as taxpayers, are the ones left to carry the can for irresponsible investment by the NWF. And given the desperate need for investment in so many other areas of public life, I’m not sure we can agree that the UK is in a better place as a result.
Absolutely, Gigaclear and it’s farsighted former management, deserve many thank’s for what they have created and the many Rural citizens they serve with FTTP. Anyone who lives in Left behind Rural areas, poorly served by BT’s creaking Copper network, understands whats at stake. BT make great play, of how many FTTP connections they have installed. But rarely mention the vast swaths of Rural UK that will be lucky to have their creaking BT Copper connections, updated to FTTP, by thye late 2030’s. There is a reason the UK lags behind most of Western Europe, in FTTP connections. Crazy government telecommunications policy, hasn’t helped…
Charlie-UK
Your assertion that “the UK lags behind most of Western Europe in FTTP connections” is utter nonsense.
Read this:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/03/strong-uk-take-up-as-ftth-council-publish-2026-european-broadband-ranking.html
@Charlie-UK, that is if you can even get any openreach network. OR only go to where they can make money.
This is why I have always said, a broadband network, no matter what it is, FTTC, fibre, even ADSL should never, never have been laid by a company that want to make money.
But this is sadly where are
600k is a few weeks of Openreach build output isn’t it?
The reality is that most rural areas are going to see Openreach arrive sooner or later, and statistically they probably already have.
It is pretty evident that Openreach could have done the same or better job with the subsidies on offer. The clearest example of this would be what Openreach achieved in Cornwall, including subsequent extensions to the contract using clawback funds, vs what Gigaclear didn’t achieve in Devon and Somerset (leading to that contract being cancelled).
It is also worth noting the relative lack of success in Cornwall by Wildanet, who gave up their Project Gigabit contracts. Areas that already had an Openreach FTTC or FTTP presence with the FTTP infill work being done on a fully commercial basis, no subsidy needed.
I’m sure the usuals will call me “BT Ivor” (one already has) but the facts speak for themselves.
Alex:
Headline figures of UK FTTP connections installed, is pretty meaningless, to many in Left behind Rural Britain. Who face an unenviable wait, into the late 2030’s for an FTTP connection. Openreach and many others seem to think, everything is peachy and they are on track, for the big analogue switch-off. They clearly haven’t spent much time in Rural Britain lately. Not that anyone should find that, very surprising…
@Alex “And given the desperate need for investment in so many other areas of public life, I’m not sure we can agree that the UK is in a better place as a result.”
Where do you suggest the NWF should have spent their money for better returns?
Propping up foreign state-owned companies building our rail or energy infrastructure? Building EV car chargers? Subsidising AI datacenters for US and Chinese tech bros?
If it makes you feel any better, I guarantee your tax bill won’t go up due to this transaction so stop fretting about it.
Why, exactly, is the taxpayer on the hook for this? No company should be bailed out by the taxpayer. Not a single one in any industry.
That’s not how the real world works only in the daily mail. The government investment fund put money in and it’s taken a haircut. As with any investment fund they spread the funds across many investments (company’s etc) and hope to overall make a profit. The performance of the fund is more important than this single written down investment.
We were in a planned Gigaclear area but they just wrote to us saying they wouldn’t be building here any more. It was expected after I saw the news about them a few months ago, especially since we’re not part of a Project Gigabit build, but still disappointing. We’ll just have to continue with Starlink until someone else comes along.
That is bad, sorry to hear that, hopefully someone will come along soon to lay a network.
When a company is so indebted, its shares are worthless. So, the shareholders got nothing in return for giving up their shares to the lenders. And how was this 40% ‘haircut’ calculated? Well, Gigaclear was worth about £600m and had £1bn debts, so that £400m gap represents exactly 40% of the total debt which has now been written off. The new shareholders reckon that Gigaclear can sustain a £600m debt (as interest payments would be reduced) and – led by the National Wealth Fund, NatWest, and Lloyds — have already injected at least £80 million in new funding.
This deal, taken with the agreed purchase of Netmonia by nexfibre, signal the long-awaited consolidation of the 100 altnets currently operating with a combined net debt exceeding £9bn but suffering from a double whammy of low take-up rates and high interest rates.
I love how Nathan Rundle (Gigaclear CEO) is trying to paint this out to be a great thing and a win for his team.
The banks have cut the debt to sell asap, claw back what they can and most or all of their staff will be out of a job.