Airband, a broadband provider for rural homes and businesses across the West of England, has successfully closed a significant £100 million ($137 million) debt package from an international banking consortium that includes HSBC, Lloyds, Nord LB and Sabadell. The debt facility enables Airband to accelerate its rollout plan of serving 600,000 premises with full-fiber broadband by 2025.
The rollout of Airband’s full-fiber-broadband services will cover more than 10,000 kilometers (about 6,200 miles) of fiber in a bid to close the digital divide between urban and rural communities across the United Kingdom. Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, recently reported that people are living increasingly virtual lives, with data usage in the United Kingdom increasing approximately 10 times from 2013 to 2019.
“We created Airband in 2009 to supply rural areas with the high-quality internet they deserve,” said Redmond Peel, founder of Airband. “The pandemic
