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Gigaclear appoints Williams as CEO

Rural full fibre broadband provider Gigaclear has appointed Gareth Williams as its new Chief Executive, starting today. Gareth succeeds Interim Chief Executive Mike Surrey, who will remain with the business until the end of March to ensure an orderly handover.

Gareth joins Gigaclear following 17 years – 11 as Chief Executive – at Interoute. Interoute’s network encompasses over 70,000km of lit fibre, 15 data centres, 17 virtual data centres and 33 colocation centres with connections to 195 additional partner data centres.

Under Gareth’s leadership, Interoute evolved into one of Europe’s largest Cloud Services platforms, with revenues growing from €188 million to €710 million, serving both Enterprise and Service Provider customers. Gareth left Interoute having led the sale of the company to GTT Communications Inc. for €2.3 billion.

Gigaclear also announces the strengthening of its operations team with the appointment of Drew Ritchie as Chief Operating Officer and Nathan Rundle as Delivery Director. Drew joins from Affinity Water Ltd, where he was Managing Director of Wholesale Operations, while Nathan joins from Openreach, where he was Delivery Director for the South region.

Charles McGregor, Independent Chairman of Gigaclear, said: “Gareth has a proven track record having successfully scaled up a large and complex pan-European network infrastructure business in his previous role. I am delighted we have been able to secure someone of his quality and look forward to working closely with him as he guides Gigaclear through the next stage of its development.”

Stephen Nelson, Asset Management Director of Infracapital, owner of Gigaclear, added: “The appointment of someone of Gareth’s calibre clearly underlines the exciting opportunities for Gigaclear and we look forward to continuing our support for the business as it works to deliver full fibre broadband to rural Britain. On behalf of Infracapital I would like to thank Interim Chief Executive Mike Surrey for his invaluable support and we wish him all the best in the future.”

Gareth Williams, new Chief Executive of Gigaclear, said: “Gigaclear has established itself as a major player in digital transformation in the UK, carrying out ambitious but vital work in connecting underserved areas of the UK to high speed internet, and I’m pleased to be joining at this exciting time in its evolution.