Trooli Launch Cheaper 150Mbps Plan on UK Full Fibre Network
Alternative broadband ISP Trooli, which is rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of England and originally aspired to cover 1 million premises by the end of 2024 (so far they claim to have covered 275k), has finally launched a cheaper entry-level 150Mbps tier.
Just to recap. Trooli’s fibre build has slowed to a crawl in recent months and the operator has since become somewhat of an acquisition target for various investors, including several rival operators (example). The provider needs more investment to continue their deployment, which is something that they’ve so far been unable to secure. Questions also surround how much take-up their network has been able to generate.
In the past we’ve mentioned that one of the provider’s problems is that their cheapest tier was a 300Mbps plan for £35 per month, which is better than fine for most people. But it may not be enough to attract consumers with only limited or basic requirements and who may be paying less for a slower FTTC tier on another ISP.
Advertisement
The good news is that Trooli have been listening, and they’ve now added a 150Mbps (50Mbps upload) package to their line-up that costs just £25 per month, on an 18-month term, and includes free installation.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Lothian Broadband Boost Funding for Highlands Full Fibre Rollout
It’s obvious their customer number was too low and why they were struggling with money
Well, maybe if their workforce were actually doing something useful it would be different. There’s a couple of Trooli vans semi-permanently parked near me, and I’m 70 miles from the nearest Trooli service areas.
Trooli is not the best example of an ALTNET. So glad Netomnia here as was nearly Trooli at one point!
The majority of the general public really aren’t ready to start paying for high speed FTTP connections, they simply don’t need it, not just yet.
Hence the reason Altnets are struggling to get decent take up percentages and are exploring different ways to get customers on board, such as offering slower/cheaper connections.
Disagree.
YouFibre from Netomnia:
£1 per month for 1st 3 months
then £29 per month for 1gbps up and 1gbps down.
No Mid contract price rises
No Install free, Free Amazon Eero Router.
or 150mbps up and 150mbs down for £21.99
Also a 500mbps offering.
ALNETS vary in price and these are clearly cheaper than BT or Openreach offerings.
The state of the economy is probably the biggest hinderance at the moment.
Wesses Internet need to take note – their unlimited 100/30 Full Fibre 100 package is far too expensive at £44pm + £49 activation.
Yep, with prices like that you just know they’re not going to attract many customers.
Like all the other Alnets, if they can’t reduce their prices, to remain competitive and also make a profit then it’s going to end in tears.
Competition means both price and speed. Not many people will pay more for better speed unless they are below 10mb. Banking on high uptake with high prices is a mistake that trooli and some other alts have made
Yep, it’s a shame but it’s obvious things are starting to get shaky in the world of alnets.
High interest rates, increased inflation, redundancies, talk of buy outs, build rates slowing down, complaints about Openreach reducing their prices.
Cityfibre even rolling out a TV advertising campaign and they’re not even an ISP.
I guess investors are starting to put the pressure on. The investors are only in it for one reason and if things aren’t going their way they won’t hesitate in pulling the plug.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight (or very soon).
Something’s got to give, the alnet world is going to go bang. Hurry, run for cover.
Wessex Internet will be fine if the only alternative that their market can buy is a £25 ADSL product that suffers from high error rates when it rains. £45 a month is expensive but it’s probably at a level where it’s a purchase you resent having to make but do anyway.
@Jonny I’m afraid the quality of some fibre optic laying is poor but worse still it’s going unchecked and being signed off as OK.
From what I’ve seen/heard some of Cityfibre’s cables could easily be taken out with a heavy handed strimmer or lawn mower!
Might not be a problem right now but what about in the months/years to come.
IDH is clearly another BT bot at work. Spreading misinformation.
Dan, Cityfibre is one ALTNET.
Netomnia (another ALTNET) for example use BT PIA and follow BT design very closely using their own pavement chambers if required, and short runs of say 40M of their own ducting if BT not possible. The major difference is they don’t use legacy GPON and use XGS-PON and can offer symmetric services right up to 10gbps to the customer. The originating start point is a BT exchange where power backup is available.
@anonymous “IDH is clearly another BT bot at work. Spreading misinformation”.
Please tell me which bit is misinformation?
IDH – This bit of your quote is just one example: “The majority of the general public really aren’t ready to start paying for high speed FTTP connections, they simply don’t need it, not just yet.”
To which I pointed out above that YouFibre was just one example of an ALTNET where they are cheaper and offer symmetric service over BT.
You made the assumption of ALTNETS not specific ones which was incorrect. They’d be paying less than IF YOU COULD get similar speeds from BT (which you can only do on downstream in this ALTNET’s case).
Just because there will be SOME Altnets go bust or for sale, does not mean the better ones will also go down and that was your other quote of doom and gloom to put people off Altnets.
Not all Altnets have bad pricing. Community Fibre in London just adjusted their prices, see below for plans. Very competitive even at super high speeds. I don’t get all the negativity about Altnets and their investors. People won’t loose any money if they go out of business and if it helps people like me getting access to super cheap super fast internet what’s the damage? Most likely all the infrastructure Altnets build will be eventually consolidated into a new or existing ISP. So it’s not even wasted, at least on most cases where there isn’t too much overbuild.
Essential 20 Mb £ 12.50/m for 12 months (no change)
150Mb £ 20/m for 24 months (no change)
removed 300Mb £ 24/m for 24 months
500Mb £ 23/m for 24 months (new tier, but cheaper than previous 300mb)
1000Mb £ 29/m for 24 months (up by £ 2)
3000Mb £ 49/m for 24 months (back on discount, previously £99)
12 months plans for 150/500/1000Mb are £ 2/m more.
In my post I only mentioned “some” alts had a bad model. Of course some alts are getting good numbers in, Community Fibre, Netomnia, Brsk and Zzoom are most likely in the winning group and I use them as examples against the altnet bad mob
@GreenLantern22 “People won’t loose any money if they go out of business…”
Really? If an altnet collapses or owners sell the business for less than they’ve invested in it, then how can they not lose money?
Your own assumption is losing money. If Cityfibre is bought by Virgin Media – it’s unlikely to have lost money. Also Trooli being sold – awaiting final figures before saying that sale was a loss….
I think wether they loose money or not depends a lot on how it gets sold. If virgin want to take over a solvent altnet they would need to make an attractive offer, on the other hand if one was to be forced into administration, the administrators are likely to sell it for less if no better offers
That didn’t take long. Reports elsewhere that Trooli’s top duo resigned today and were replaced by directors from new French owners Vauban Infrastructure Partners.
Previously the FT reported that Trooli only spent £170 per premises passed and that Virgin Media dropped out of the bidding due to the high price and the estimated cost of necessary repairs.
This new tier is a sensible move. There aren’t enough early adopters willing to pay a premium for higher speeds, they also need mass market take-up which will only occur if they undercut the price of current services or at worst offer something better for about the same price. Their best chance of success is by building a large customer base quickly, before Openreach inevitably overbuilds them.
VM dropped out because City Fibre came along and was much bigger footprint. They wanted to save the money for that and this was what was reported…
Building a customer base at loss making prices is easy (Virgin Media themselves are experts at this bit). The hard part is retaining those customers and bring the business into a sustainably profit making position (Virgin Media have their own problems in this department).
What remains to be proven is that any altnet can build a duplicate infrastructure to an acceptable standard and then achieve a credible return on capital where infrastructure provision is duplicated, when Openreach ISPs set the market price, and the altnet is subject to the full challenges of acquisition, churn and retention. As long as there’s somebody willing to provide cash backing to allow the directors to sign off “going concern” then altnet operations continue in denial of the forces of financial gravity, but I’ll assert that the numbers don’t stack up, and will never stack up until certain investors (and lenders) have taken a two thirds haircut on the money they put in. The only way VIP can address the universal constant of ROCE>COC is if they believe they can find somebody willing to pay more for the asset than they did. Charles Ponzi will be laughing from his grave.
Note: Interesting story, that of Charles Ponzi, look it up on Wikipedia and it is remarkable that there’s not been a really major film made of his life. It’s difficult not to admire him, but I’m pretty sure you can’t say that of the industrial finance houses that are backing the altnets.
Indeed. They apparently needed to sell or they were to go under by the end of March.
Consolidation with another Altnet would have been better for Trooli rather than just being taken over.
The same problem still exists (as for all Alnets) simply not enough customers to make it profitable and sustainable for everyone.
Rob: “Consolidation with another Altnet would have been better for Trooli rather than just being taken over.”
But that’s exactly what will happen. Vauban don’t want some altnet minnow quietly destroying value on their books, they simply reckon they can moderate the losses for long enough to either sell Trooli to another investor who already have altnet assets in the UK, or they want Trooli to be a platform for them to bolt on more altnets (whether VIP are really in for the long haul who knows, as financial investors probably not).
@Andrew G – Cityfibre have made it known they’re open to offers, maybe they could buy them too and bolt them together.
Not sure merging Cityfibre and Trooli be a good move.
Looking at coverage maps the Cityfibre builds are larger. They run dark fibre into each area and provide their own resilient backhaul.
The Trooli builds look much smaller and more scattered. Not sure how they do their backhaul but the cost must be significant vs number of customers served.
Both very different business models
It’s near enough correct to say that all altnets (excepting B4RN and any few similar models) are backed by financial investors, so it’s not so much whether an altnet company thinks it is or should be for sale, rather that the investors behind each one are always open to attractive offers to sell out, or the option of buying and integrating other similar investments. I don’t believe Vauban have the financial muscle to buy out CityFibre, as that’s likely to have a low single digit billions price tag, about thirty times the size of Trooli. Vauban could extend their investment in Trooli by
a few hundred million and partner with another investor to take CityFibre, but then they’d be a minority investor without control and that’s not a comfortable place for many PE investors.
For some reason Google news thinks I should read this.. Laughing from the supposed third world on a gigabit connection for which my isp is trying to sell me a 2gbps upgrade that I don’t actually need.
Wth is wrong with the UK market? Nobody sells 300mbps plans as the brand new thing here..thats ridiculously slow.
I’m not surprised – the developing world generally didn’t have any widespread old infrastructure with complicated upgrade paths, far fewer vested interests trying to impede progress, no NIMBYism towards the slightest change, and probably doesn’t have daft ideas about having competing physical infrastructures. Moreover the costs of building new assets in the developing world is often a fraction of the cost that’s required in Europe.
Maybe the yokels think 300 Mbps is ridiculously slow, but what exactly are they doing that actually makes any use of a gig of bandwidth?
The UK market is one of the highest, if not the highest, consumers of data per head in the world.
The UK as a whole has superb connectivity to the rest of the world: something that can’t be said for many countries.
The UK has some of the highest quality in the world: no massive slowdowns at peak times for most.
All of this means no selling gigabit services that routinely slow down to a couple of hundred megabits to anywhere at peak times and huge speed differences within the nation versus outside it.
The idea that 300 is ridiculously slow is bonkers.
I think it’s still fair to say most people who just browse the web and use Iplayer or skyQ or the occasional streaming app don’t need much more than 30mbps on the whole. This Package is right in line with most ISP’s offering now without the instability of FTTC/ADSL and a nice speed boost.
If it’s Gamers downloading massive updates and wanting to do it as fast as possible or families all using streaming Gaming at the same time then the more expensive packages make sense. I doubt many want to pay much for it and many will need after market mesh wifi systems or hard wired access points in the right places systems to insure they get the performance benefits of there broadband anyway. BT’s disk system does an ok job ( though it has it’s issues and I’ve seen far to many people not understand how or why with regards to setting it up correctly, like thinking the disks will work where there is no signal or a bad signal), not sure what other isp’s actually try deal with this.