Specialist infrastructure investment fund, Basalt Infrastructure Partners III, has bought a majority interest in wholesale fibre network provider Full Fibre. The investment will enable Full Fibre to extend its network to at least 500,000 additional premises by 2025.
Full Fibre focuses on connecting ‘forgotten’ market towns in the West Midlands, Central and South West to gigabit fibre, focusing on business parks and towns with between 5,000 and 40,000 premises. In 2019 Full Fibre delivered 10Gbit/s fibre to Leominster Enterprise Park, funded by Fastershire’s Marches and Gloucestershire Broadband Grant. The first 100,000 premises in its new network extension programme are due to go live in 2021 with a further 400,000 bypassed by 2025. Unusually, Full Fibre is a wholesale alternative network provider, providing network connectivity to retail broadband service providers.
“Full Fibre’s mission has always been to deliver pure fibre, wholesale only networks to underserved market towns,” said CEO Oliver Helm. “It’s vital that new infrastructure provides a competitive wholesale market to consumers, giving them the ability to move their purchasing power in search of quality, price and service .”
Steven Lowry, Partner of Basalt Infrastructure Partners said: “We’re pleased to have acquired Full Fibre through a bilateral acquisition process and to support the company’s business plan through further capital investment. We look forward to working closely with the management team to accelerate the delivery of reliable, wholesale, and high-speed FTTP services to underserved market towns in the West Midlands, Central and South West of England.”
Basalt is a multi-billion pound infrastructure fund focusing on investments in utilities, energy, transport and telecommunications infrastructure in Europe and North America. Previous Basalt Infrastructure Partners LLP advised funds acquired network operator Manx Telecom and German fibre company Connect in 2019.
