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By Emma Rumney
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Hyperoptic, which delivers super-fast broadband via fibre optic cables, has borrowed 100 million pounds to increase the size of its network and take on industry giants like BT.
Founded in 2011, Hyperoptic is currently available to 350,000 premises. It said on Friday it had secured a new round of funding from European banks BNP Paribas (PA:BNPP), ING, RBS (LON:RBS) and NIBC with a seven-year term.
The firm said it will use the funds to increase the size of its network to reach two million premises by 2022, and to a further five million by 2025.
"This investment will enable us to repeat the same fivefold increase in coverage that we have achieved over the last six years," said Hyperoptic Chairman Boris Ivanovic.
Previous funding totalling 75 million pounds, including 21 million pounds from the European Investment Bank, have seen Hyperoptic's coverage expand across 28 UK cities.
In November 2016, the government dedicated 400 million pounds to ramping up the country's fibre-to-home network, seen as the gold standard of broadband, to help boost the economy. The funding round focused on smaller emerging providers, to introduce more competition to the sector.
Infrastructure like that used by Hyperoptic allows broadband speeds to surpass 1 gigabyte per second, compared to 76 megabytes per second on BT's network.
($1 = 0.7658 pounds)