An ultrafast band provider backed by the billionaire investor George Soros has borrowed £100m from a consortium of banks to fund a rapid network expansion that will increase pressure on BT and Virgin Media.

Hyperoptic, which previously raised £50m from Mr Soros’s fund and £21m from the European Investment Bank, said the loans would allow it to reach two million homes and businesses by 2022.

The company builds full fibre connections that are more reliable and more than 10 times faster than the best possible on most of the infrastructure run by BT’s network subsidiary Openreach.

The expansion plans would put Hyperoptic on a par with Openreach’s current upgrade commitments. BT has agreed to fund two million full fibre connections.

Under pressure from the Government and regulators, Openreach is consulting with with Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone, as well as BT’s retail arm, on their appetite for more full fibre. It aims to boost investment to cover 10 million premises by 2025. Hyperoptic said it will cover five million by then.

Meanwhile Virgin Media’s cable network expansion plan Project Lightning, which aims to capitalise on its speed advantage over Openreach by connecting an extra four million homes by 2020, has hit delays as roadworks have proved more challenging than anticipated.