toob raises £75 million funding to expand UK fibre network
Portsmouth-based fibre broadband provider, toob has secured a £75 million funding package from Amber Infrastructure Group’s National Digital Infrastructure Fund (‘NDIF’) to support the build out of a gigabit-capable, fibre network.
The company has committed to the delivery of gigabit broadband speeds to more than 100,000 UK premises by the end of 2021, with an ambition to expand its full fibre network to pass more than one million homes and business premises over the next ten years. The NDIF investment will help the provider to achieve this.
Founded by Nick Parbutt (CEO) and Mike Banwell (CFO), former directors at Vodafone UK, toob will deploy the latest fibre technology over existing infrastructure as often as it can to increase the speed of its roll out and reduce community disruption. The company expects to be a major customer of Openreach’s improved ducts and pole access (PIA) product, which becomes fully available at the beginning of April.
Said Parbutt: ‘We are delighted to be partnering with Amber Infrastructure. toob now has the right people, the right plan and the right funding in place to capitalise on the exciting opportunity ahead of us.’
Jonathan Oxley, Ofcom’s competition group director, commented: ‘The amount of internet data used by people in the UK is growing by around half every year. So we’ll increasingly need full-fibre broadband services like this to provide faster, more reliable connections and capacity to our homes and offices. These plans are another example of full-fibre being used to build broadband that can support the UK’s digital future.’
Matthew Vickerstaff, interim chief executive officer, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, said: ‘This investment shows how the National Digital Infrastructure Fund continues to help companies improve broadband speeds across cities and towns in the UK, by increasing their access to private finance. Upgrading our digital infrastructure to be reliable, sustainable and resilient is key to meeting the needs of an increasingly digital world, and increasing our productivity.’
