(Bloomberg) — Fiber network startup Netomnia Ltd has raised 295 million pounds ($385 million) led by DigitalBridge Investment Management, showing there’s still ample investor appetite to challenge Britain’s big phone companies.
Additional funding came from previous investors Soho Square Capital LLP and Advencap Ltd, and takes Netomnia’s total funding to 418 million pounds, including 73 million pounds of debt, founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Chelot said. The company declined to share a valuation.
Chelot, 38, has experience raising funds for fledgling fiber companies. He previously led the growth of London-focused network startup Community Fibre, which was sold in 2020 to private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC and DTCP, the venture arm of Deutsche Telekom AG.
Chelot and Community Fiber co-founder Callum Dick used money from that deal to start Netomnia, as well as a new internet service provider called YouFibre, which will share the funding. Chelot wants to build fiber lines to a million homes across the U.K. in the next two years, in a range of areas except his former stomping grounds of London, which already has plenty of competition, he said.
“The goal is simple: Netomnia wants to become the third national operator in the U.K,” Chelot said in an interview. That will mean competing with Britain’s dominant network company, former state monopoly BT Group Plc, which has pledged to build 25 million connections by the end of 2026, and the second player, Virgin Media O2, which is in talks with potential investors to connect millions more homes to fiber.
“Obviously that crown is contested, but that’s where we want to be,” Chelot said.
He’s up against some big fellow challengers, who have been plowing money into U.K. alternative networks or “alt nets” for several years in a land grab to connect as many customers as possible to gigabit broadband, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-backed CityFibre Holdings Ltd. and KKR & Co. Inc.’s Hyperoptic.
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