£30m Funding Helps Rural Broadband ISP Voneus Target 900K UK Homes

Rural fixed wireless broadband ISP Voneus, which currently only covers around 4,500 UK premises with their 30-50Mbps capable network, has managed to secure a large investment from Macquarie Capital that could help their network to target 900,000 homes. Going forward they also intend to rollout full fibre (FTTP) services.

At present Voneus’s wireless network spans 25 communities in rural parts of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, South Wales, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Wiltshire. So far most of that has been powered by a 2017 funding injection of £9 million from BOOST&Co.

However the current market is a lot more focused on Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) services, which has perhaps left some Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) ISPs to feel a little apprehensive about their future. Nevertheless Voneus has today secured an initial commitment of £10m from Macquarie Capital, which includes the potential to invest up to £30m in phases.

The proceeds from this will be used to refinance debt and support the rollout of further high-speed broadband to communities in rural parts of the UK. Voneus said they will focus on the up to 900,000 homes across the countryside who still don’t have access to superfast broadband services, although it’s unclear how many of those will actually be connected.

Crucially the deal means that Voneus will now also be moving to build 1Gbps capable “full fibre” networks, although initially they will only aim to connect their “more established communities to full fibre broadband“.

Steve Leighton, CEO of Voneus, said:

“Macquarie Capital’s backing is a huge endorsement of Voneus’ business model and vision, as well as an indication of how much work still needs to be done to connect the many homes and business across the UK that still do not have access to decent broadband services.

Not only will it help us speed up the rollout of fixed wireless services in hard-to-reach communities, it means that – longer term – we will be able to add full fibre broadband to our portfolio; this will be a complete game-changer for these hitherto neglected areas.”

Oliver Bradley, Managing Director for Macquarie Capital, said:

“The roll-out of superfast and ultrafast broadband has too often focused on the UK’s urban centres – leaving untapped investment requirements in the UK’s rural communities. We believe that using Macquarie Capital’s unique principal investment and development expertise there is a significant opportunity to work with Voneus to accelerate the deployment of UK rural broadband, this will help unlock significant economic and social benefits for the UK.”

The level of investment stated above is obviously nowhere near enough to achieve 900,000 premises with full fibre, although the announcement doesn’t specify a time-scale for their deployment or state whether all of those will be achieved via FTTP or a mix of FTTP and FWA. Assuming the focus is on remote rural areas then they could perhaps reach 4,000 – 8,000 homes with full fibre on that first £10m (depending upon model and area).

The move may also have an impact upon Voneus’s arrangement with rural FTTP provider Gigaclear. Back in 2018 they entered into a partnership with Gigaclear (here), which saw them become a Gigaclear Retail Services Provider (wholesale) and this meant they could resell Gigaclear’s FTTP services (i.e. useful for when / if Gigaclear moves into some of their wireless network patch).