BT rival raises funds for rollout in London

A BT challenger is intensifying its push across London after raising £250m to upgrade businesses to ultrafast broadband.

Vorboss plans to provide full-fibre coverage to all commercial buildings in central London, in an attempt to corner a significant slice of the city’s broadband market.

The company has already installed more than 500km of full-fibre cable in London over the past two years, including connecting the UK’S largest office building, 22 Bishopsgate, in the City.

Vorboss is one of a number of broadband minnows attempting to steal market share from BT by capitalising on the rush to upgrade Britain from older copper wires to faster and more reliable full-fibre connectivity.

Tim Creswick, the founder and chief executive of Vorboss, said: “Our network is designed for one purpose: provide the capacity that London needs. In a market where most businesses are still connected at 1Gbps or less, we’re proud to be providing 10 Gbps as a minimum.

“We own our network end to end and sell directly to our customers, which allows us to bypass the resellers that provide access to the Openreach network.”

Vorboss says its investment in London has already created 300 jobs.

Boris Johnson, when he was prime minister, vowed to upgrade 85pc of the nation to gigabit speeds by 2025, triggering a flood of private investment backing fledgling broadband firms.

Vorboss is owned by Fern Trading, which also owns full-fibre broadband builders Jurassic Fibre, focused on the South West, and Swish Fibre, which targets the Home Counties.

The pace of BT’S upgrade to full-fibre and Virgin Media O2’s ultra-fast broadband push have driven consolidation in the market. Giganet, another Fern business targeting southern England, this month bought the internet service provider Cuckoo.