Airband Restructuring Puts Pressure on Jobs and UK Fibre Build

Broadband ISP and network builder Airband, which originally aimed to cover 600,000 UK premises in rural areas via a mix of their wireless (FWA) and full fibre (FTTP) networks by the end of 2025, has revealed that it’s going through a “period of restructuring” after claims of redundancies and build pauses surfaced.

The provider is currently owned by Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI), which acquired a majority stake in November 2020, and in 2021 the company was also successful in securing a £100m debt package from an international banking consortium (HSBC, Lloyds, Nord LB and Sabadell). Since then they’ve continued to expand their network across various parts of the country, particularly around Devon, Somerset, Shropshire, Oxford and other places.

Airband is also known to have secured a number of state-aid supported rollout contracts, such as via the Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) and Connecting Shropshire programmes in England. But like so many other alternative network operators in the market right now, they’re not immune to the wider pressures, such as rising built costs, competition from rivals and the difficulties of securing fresh investment in a high interest rate environment.

The challenges were underlined in June 2023 after Sky News reported that the company required a “substantial injection of new capital” (here). According to that report, Airband had hired restructuring firms AlixPartners and Houlihan Lokey to help find additional funding amid difficult conditions. Shortly after that, we noted Amber Infrastructure had sold its minority stake in the business (here).

Since then there haven’t been any new developments, but that started to change this month as we began to receive reports – from various sources – alleging that the operator was making redundancies and pausing new builds. We queried whether this was indeed the case and received the following statement.

A spokesperson for Airband said today:

“Airband Community Internet is going through a period of restructuring following a detailed review of its business strategy, to focus on maximising its current assets.

This is a live process and as such we are not able to comment any further at this time.

More information will be shared in the coming weeks if and when appropriate.”

At this stage it remains unclear precisely what the outcome of this restructuring will be. But other operators in a similar situation have, over the past year, already moved to slow their network deployments (usually resulting in job losses) and switched their focus toward growing take-up to ensure some future stability. Such moves are a prudent course of action in the current climate.

Furthermore, a number of industry sources and other indications have suggested to ISPreview that Gigaclear may be exploring the possibility of a tie-up with Airband, although precisely what form this might take (sale, merger, wholesale agreement etc.), or indeed whether it results in any outcome at all, remains open to speculation.

A spokesperson for Gigaclear told ISPreview that they had “no comment” on the report, while Airband told ISPreview that there is currently “no imminent merger with Gigaclear or anyone else” on the cards. But Airband declined to comment further when we queried if this would be the case over a wider timescale, which isn’t surprising given how fluid and uncertain the market is right now (a lot of operators are engaged in talks).

In theory, Gigaclear’s recently secured debt facility (here) – worth £1.5bn – gives them a significant war chest, which makes more sense if they’re planning to secure some key Project Gigabit contractors or use it on strategic M&A (mergers) activity.