Full Fibre ISP Trooli Ploughs £3.5m into Marketing for UK Network

Alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP Trooli (CallFlow), which last month secured nearly £27m (€30m) from European investors (here) and aims to cover 500,000 premises across the South East of England by the end of 2024, has signed a £3.5m deal with marketing firm Cheeky to help promote their new network.

The ISP, which is the offspring of UK ISP Call Flow Solutions and was founded by ex-BT executive Andy Conibere, only started life last year (here) and has so far covered over 6,000 premises around Kings Hill, Kate Reed Wood, Paddock Wood and Hawking in Kent, as well as Ropley and Bramdean in Hampshire.

The operator is known to be using ADTRAN’s new 10Gbps XGS-PON Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) equipment and they’re also making some strategic use of Openreach’s (BT) existing cable ducts via the recently revised Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which enables them to run their own fibre through some of the incumbents existing ducts.

However we think it’s probably fair to say that a lot of alternative network (AltNets) providers, particularly those in the Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) sector, tend to overlook the importance of fully promoting what they build. Often just sticking flyers through doors isn’t enough (most of us automatically bin such things).

In response Trooli and Cheeky is to run a much bigger and fully integrated campaign that will target homes across the South East of England via OOH (outdoor advertising), TV, Radio as well as Digital, Social and Direct Marketing. Cheeky was previously responsible for helping CallFlow to design and establish the Trooli brand (details).

Andy Conibere, CEO of Trooli, said:

“We were delighted with Cheeky’s great work in helping us select Trooli as our FTTP brand. Their subsequent leadership in developing the brand identity meant that consolidating the partnership with a new three year contract; was an easy decision to make.”

Max Borsa, Cheeky Managing Director, said:

“This is a significant win for us and helps cement our growing reputation as a heavyweight agency. It’s great to be partnering with such a creative thinking client too – the trial campaign was bold, innovative, and was rewarded as a finalist in two national award schemes. It confirms our belief that you don’t need to be in London to do challenging, creative and successful work.”

We assume this is a location targeted deal since otherwise Trooli would run the risk of promoting something that many people can’t yet access, although they could also use it to help collect interest from nearby communities to their existing network (demand-led deployments can use this to plan their rollout).

Trooli’s packages tend to cost from £50 inc. VAT per month for an unlimited 300Mbps service and this rises to £80 for 900Mbps+ (one-off installation charges range from £80 for self-install to £120 for a Trooli install).