Basalt Infrastructure Partners LLP (Basalt) announces Basalt Infrastructure Partners Fund III (a fund advised by Basalt) is bringing FullFibre and Digital Infrastructure together in a move that will create a single wholesale platform and a bigger, more ambitious entity in the UK fibre market.
Aim to serve 1 Million premises
Basalt today announces the merger of its two UK fibre to the premises network operators, Digital Infrastructure and FullFibre.
The merger happens as a pro-active move in the competitive UK fibre market, bringing greater scale and combining routes to market for these established fibre assets.
The combined business, to be led by CEO Oliver Helm, will integrate Digital Infrastructure’s and FullFibre’s existing footprint and continue the build out in more rural regions. It will create a highly complementary network and take advantage of FullFibre’s wholesale-first strategy.
The merger will also create one of the larger offerings by UK altnets, with a network accessible by over 250,000 homes and businesses Ready for Service (RFS) today, with an ambition to deliver 1 million live premises through a wholesale business model.
The internet service provider (ISP) of Digital Infrastructure, BeFibre, which today provides retail services via both the FullFibre and Digital Infrastructure networks, will remain part of the group as a customer of the enhanced wholesale platform.
- Over 250,000 RFS premises available today, with over 300,000 to be available by the end of the year.
- A combined build rate of up to 40,000 new RFS per month.
- 67 towns actively in build or nearing completion.
Commenting on the merger, Wil Jones, Partner at Basalt, said,
“The UK fibre sector is maturing and, through this merger, we will create a business with substantial scale, under a single wholesale platform. This will ensure long-term success and strengthen our position in the market to accelerate the plans of both businesses”.
“This consolidation places us well to take advantage of opportunities in the UK fibre market and continue our investment in network rollout across the UK, enhancing the platform’s ability to deliver increasingly essential fibre infrastructure in historically under-served areas.”
Oliver Helm, CEO at FullFibre, also comments, “Both Digital Infrastructure and FullFibre have built exceptionally skilled teams, with complementary capabilities. Together, we will accelerate the pace at which we roll out and connect customers to our fibre network. The merged organisation will sit in the top tier of well-established, alternative networks. With this substantive scale, we will continue our single-minded focus on delivering exceptional network infrastructure to our ISPs, and their customers and communities in turn”.
It is understood that from Full Fibre’s side their Full fibre Fibre Heroes consumer facing brand and 12 ISP’s will remain the same but with a much bigger footprint with Digital Infrastructure’s premises.
This will give Digital Infrastructures premises access to all of Fibre Heroes ISP’s giving customers more choice.
Overall it will be an interesting few years ahead and I expect we will see more consolidation like this happing in the sector.
