Product Update
Is Square Mile Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Square Mile from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Square Mile today.
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Square Mile pitched a wireless broadband service for UK marinas in series 2 and landed a rare joint offer from two dragons who admitted they knew nothing about boats. The short version of what happened next: this is actually one of the show's cleaner success stories, just not in the form most people expect when they ask if a company is still in business.
The pitch and the deal
Founder Dominic Killinger pitched Square Mile, a wireless broadband supplier delivering internet access to coastal and inland marinas, in series 2, episode 1. He asked for £150,000 in exchange for 40 percent of the business.
Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis made the joint offer at those terms, £150,000 for 40 percent, one of the few episodes where multiple dragons were actively competing to back the same entrepreneur before he settled on this pair. Neither Jones nor Paphitis had a background in marine services, and both said as much on camera, which makes the deal an interesting bet on the founder and the underlying network technology rather than on category expertise.
Built, then sold
Square Mile built out its wireless network to cover 39 coastal and inland marinas across the UK and Jersey, a genuinely useful bit of infrastructure for boat owners who wanted internet access without hauling a laptop to a marina office.
In January 2008, BT acquired the business, Square Mile Marina Limited, from its parent company Square Mile International Limited, for consideration of up to £150,000 in cash. Killinger and his investors, including Jones and Paphitis, effectively bought out their Dragons' Den partnership through the sale. BT then migrated the service onto its own BT Openzone wi-fi brand ahead of the following sailing season.
Why marina wi-fi was a smart niche
It is easy to overlook how sharp the original idea was. Marinas are geographically isolated pockets of demand, boat owners and liveaboards who wanted reliable internet access but sat outside normal broadband and mobile coverage in the mid-2000s. Building a dedicated wireless network purpose-built for that footprint, rather than trying to compete with general-purpose broadband providers, gave Square Mile a defensible, hard-to-replicate asset once it was built.
That is precisely the kind of infrastructure asset a large telecoms company finds attractive to acquire rather than compete against. BT did not need to build 39 separate marina wi-fi deployments from scratch when it could simply buy a company that had already done the hard, unglamorous work of laying it down.
A different kind of ending, worth flagging
Our directory currently lists Square Mile as still selling. Taken literally, that is not accurate: the company was acquired by BT back in 2008 and stopped operating as an independent business under the Square Mile name shortly after. This is being flagged for the site's editorial team to review.
That said, an acquisition by a company the size of BT is a genuine exit, arguably a better outcome for the founder and investors than years of independent trading would have produced. It is a different category of ending from a company folding or being dissolved, and it is worth telling that story accurately rather than filing it under either a simple "still in business" or a simple "failed" label.
How this compares with other Den exits
Acquisitions are relatively rare among the companies covered on this site compared with either ongoing independent trading or outright closure, and Square Mile stands out as one of the cleanest examples of the acquisition path. Unlike deals that later ended in administration or liquidation after growth stalled, this one ended with a larger company paying to take over the infrastructure and customer base entirely.
For research purposes, that distinction matters: a company acquired on favourable terms is not the same story as a company that failed to find a sustainable footing on its own. Square Mile belongs firmly in the former category.
The verdict
Square Mile is not still in business as an independent company. It was acquired by BT in January 2008, and its marina wi-fi service was absorbed into BT's own network branding shortly afterward. What it is, instead, is a rare Dragons' Den deal that ended in a straightforward corporate acquisition rather than collapse, growth, or stagnation.
For a company that took £150,000 from two dragons who freely admitted they knew nothing about boats, ending up bought out by BT within roughly a year is a solid result, even if the Square Mile name itself did not last much longer than that.
Where to buy Square Mile
Still selling as of 10 July 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Square Mile deal breakdown and term sheet →
