Community Fibre secures additional £125m for London gigabit push

Bringing total investment in the company to £1.1bn, UK alternative network provider (altnet) Community Fibre has announced that it has signed a new finance facility provided and/or arranged by JP Morgan, Barclays, LBBW, SIMCo (Sequoia Investment Management Company) and Alpha Bank, raising a total of £125m.

With a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network covering 1.3 million properties in London, which is over one-third of homes in the capital, Community Fibre is owned by funds advised by Warburg Pincus LLC, DTCP Railpen and NDIF, and claims to be the UK capital’s largest 100% full-fibre broadband provider.

The company’s product portfolio, ranging from 35 Mbps to 10 Gbps, is claimed by the company as boasting some of the fastest symmetrical download and upload speeds in the country, as well as leading the industry for customer service.

The altnet’s initial £400m funding in 2020, followed by a finance facility of £985m closed in October 2022, has been the spur to fulfil a plan to roll out a full-fibre broadband network to 2.2 million London homes by the end of 2024.

Community Fibre has connected more than 310,000 residents and businesses across the capital and has seen an 85% increase in its customer base in the past 12 months, driven by people looking to altnets for faster, more affordable 100% full-fibre broadband along with better service, said the company.

The provider has expanded its network footprint by 75% in the 12 months to February 2024, claiming to have firmly established itself as a faster, more sustainable and more affordable broadband provider. The company also announced it has been EBITDA positive since April 2024.

Two years ago, the company expanded into Surrey and West Sussex by taking a majority stake in Surrey-based full-fibre network operator Box Broadband, to help realise a commitment to bridging the digital divide in the UK.

Businesses include Nando’s and London Grid for Learning (LGFL). It has also signed multiple wholesale agreements with major UK internet service providers, making it the only London-based altnet to do so.

As part of its stated ambition to provide schools with faster, more reliable fibre broadband support, the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) has entered into a partnership with Community Fibre to provide backup secondary connectivity to schools across London.

Commenting on the new investment, Community Fibre CEO Graeme Oxby said: “Community Fibre has been and will continue to be highly focussed on delivering the best customer experience and the best value for money in the market.

“Our success here, growing from just 10,000 customers at the start of 2020 to over 310,000 in less than five years, has driven a strong lender appetite. We and our financial backers are aligned on driving acquisition growth and confident in overachieving our penetration targets.”