Rural Broadband ISP Airband Appoint New MD as CEO Stands Down
Alternative network operator and ISP Airband, which has a target of reaching 400,000 premises in UK rural areas via a mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and full fibre (FTTP) networks by 2026, has today announced the appointment of Kash Rahman as its new Managing Director. But the company’s CEO and Founder, Redmond Peel, is standing down.
The operator, which has been going through a period of restructuring that disrupted some builds and caused redundancies (here and here), has otherwise spent the past few years expanding their network across multiple UK counties, including parts of Wales, the South West, the Midlands, Cheshire and Oxfordshire. Airband has also scooped up various state aid funded contracts, such as around Shropshire, Devon and Somerset.
Despite the recent struggles, Airband recently announced that they were able to secure additional investment from abrdn to “accelerate rural broadband expansion” across the West of England (here). To date, abrdn has invested over £200m into growing the Airband business, but such major investments are often followed by changes in senior management, which may partly help to explain today’s news.
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The new MD, Kash Rahman, has actually been with Airband since 2020 – as Director of Business Planning, Strategy & Transformation – and was unanimously chosen to take on the leadership of the business by the Senior Management Team, shareholders and non-executive directors. Before joining Airband, Kash studied engineering and has previously held senior positions at various other businesses across the UK and Europe.
Redmond Peel, Non-Executive Director of Airband, said:
“As both Founder and CEO of Airband it has been an honour to lead the business to where it is today, and having worked with Kash for the last few years, I know I am passing its leadership on into very capable hands. I look forward to Airband’s further growth and development in the coming years, as well as supporting the team from my new Non-Executive Director position.”
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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Maybe now we’ll get an update on their CDS contract in Devon?
I spoke to Airband and all builds are continuing but yes just awaiting confirmation on CDS.
Work was done by Airband to install fibre in my village in Devon 6 months ago, no update from them on progress, no answer to email queries from them or CDS. Worryingly, Airband’s site no longer shows that ‘fibre is coming to your area’ and the previous FWA offer is gone too… great.
Same here only more so: fibre through the village, fibre up our “drive” (actually a 1/2 mile farm track) to the pole below the house but no connection and the website now says no.
I rang them up to ask since we signed up over 2 years ago. Support didn’t answer, but sales picked up the phone and eventually told me that we have been “descoped”. No reason given, and not direct notification from them that they have decided to dump us.
So we are left with fibre everywhere but no connection!
I have to say that as an organisation they have carried opacity and obfuscation to new heights over the 2 1/2 years I have been trying to deal with them. They don’t pick up the phone, or if they do and promise to email you back information they don’t. I did actually manage to get a response by going into their local depot and speaking to a human, but that response – like all the others I have had – turned out to be incorrect.
Their reputation round here (mid Devon) is “not very good” and it is easy to see why.
So the future appears to be Starlink, which is good but eye-wateringly expensive, or 4G which here is only marginally less rubbish than the existing phone line which runs at 3 MBits.
Every few months I make the effort to get in touch with them to discover where our rollout is. It’s more for a laugh than anything as it will always be about 6 months in the future and continue thus until the end of the universe, or Airband run out of money to tell lies.
What I would love to know is what does their contract with CDS actually say? It seems to be that they can do whatever they like and there are never any consequences.