Rural UK Broadband ISP Airband Appoints New Chairman
Rural broadband ISP Airband, which is deploying a mix of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks across various parts of the UK, has announced the appointment of Ian Fishwick as both their new Chairman of the Board and a Non-Executive Director.
The operator, which is being backed by Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI) and in 2021 secured a £100m debt package from an international banking consortium (HSBC, Lloyds, Nord LB and Sabadell), currently aims to cover 600,000 UK premises with their network by the end of 2025 (mostly across West England, the Home Counties and Wales). The latest update states that they’ve so far passed 200,000 premises, but it’s unclear how many of those are FWA vs FTTP.
The new Chairman, Ian Fishwick, is said to bring nearly 30 years’ experience to the leadership team, from founding and rapidly scaling AdEPT Technology Group to circa £70m sales as CEO, to MD at NETnet, responsible for transforming the organisation into a profitable business. In addition to this, he has previously held roles of MD at Telewest and originally as MD of GEC Marconi Secure Systems.
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Redmond Peel, Chief Executive, said:
“The strategy for the firm remains unchanged as we continue to rapidly expand our business year on year. I am delighted Ian is joining us as Chair and NED. His skills and extensive experience will be incredibly valuable to Airband, and we look forward to working with him at this exciting time in our journey.”
End.
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.
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Hopefully he will address the shockingly low network reliability and awful customer service that is very apparent here in West Devon for users of the Airband wireless network.
Customer service is awful and would get my wooden spoon.
Cheshire is no better – you only have to read their reviews on Trustpilot. Once you strip out the positive reviews for their installation engineers and the fact that fibre is faster than copper (when it works), most of what’s left is incredibly negative.
It feels to me like a company on the verge of failing – permanent discounts to boost the revenue, and no apparent investment in their dire back office and support structure. Let’s hope they get taken over by a more competent outfit.
iTS A SHAME THAT TRULY RURAL AREAS SUCH AS NORTH OF INVERNESS ARE NOT ON THE LIST FOR UPGRADE TO FIBRE TO HOME AND THE MOST WE CAN GET IS 9MB.