New Full Fibre Broadband ISP Trooli Starts Rural UK Rollout in Kent

Alternative network provider Call Flow Solutions has today taken the wraps off their new UK ISP brand, Trooli, which has spent the past few months gathering private investment and quietly rolling out a new Gigabit capable rural Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based ultrafast broadband network in Kent (England).

Call Flow is already quite well known in the industry and they’ve been building alternative networks using their own flavours of full fibre FTTP/H, hybrid fibre FTTC (VDSL2) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology since all the way back in 2002 (see our 2016 interview with MD Andy Conibere). Most of their past work has taken place around their home county of Kent, as well as in parts of East Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire.

However Call Flow has now decided to branch out and today they’re formally launching a new FTTP/H provider under the brand of Trooli. Several Proof of Concept (PoC) networks for this have already been established in Kent since early 2018, albeit initially under the Call Flow brand, with local homes and businesses being offered download speeds of 300Mbps, 500Mbps and 1000Mbps.

The new ISP has a similar focus to rivals Gigaclear and TrueSpeed in that they’re aiming to plug the small rural towns gap, which they say are the sort of areas that were last to get “superfast” FTTC broadband and have generally not been the focus of most FTTP announcements to date.

In order to do this they’ve also been making use of Openreach’s existing cable ducts via the revised Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product, which is supported by Ofcom’s recent regulatory changes from their Strategic Review (here). “We are helped significantly by the government’s full fibre policy and the regulatory approach,” said Call Flow Director, Mary James, to ISPreview.co.uk.

The changes are said to be helping the provider’s otherwise small team to pass 1,000 premises per month, which is quite impressive given their size.

Andy Conibere, CEO of Call Flow, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We are really excited to be formally launching our new full fibre product and its associated branding – Trooli. This is after conducting extensive proof-of-concept testing from building two separate networks that could previously only get ‘up to’ 76Mbps FTTC services. Customer feedback on our 300/500/1000Mbps products has demonstrated a clear appetite for the higher speeds and more reliable service that true fibre offers over a copper alternative.

Being the longest standing active consumer of the Openreach PIA product, our deployment model leverages over seven years of experience using their ducts and poles. This experience has enabled us to get the £/premise passed costs to industry leading levels. Coupling our fibre network with Adtran’s XGS-PON 10Gbps equipment, that can be readily upgraded to NGPON2, means that broadband speeds can remain ahead of the demand curve and help make UK PLC more competitive.

Government and regulatory policy is definitely helping to drive Altnet growth, and the funding to facilitate this. Indeed, the regulatory environment on PIA is enabling us to commercially target smaller towns and larger villages that have only more recently benefited from superfast broadband after BDUK intervention.

We hope the brand name of ‘trooli’, helps get across to the general public what the industry and government is increasingly saying i.e. there is a very real difference between what is commonly being marketed as ‘fibre’ and what is truly fibre.”

At present trooli has completed their deployments to two rural towns and more than 5,000 premises, which cover Paddock Wood and King’s Hill (West Malling). Enough investment has also been secured to reach a further 10 towns over the next 12 months, which the provider predicts will expand their coverage by a further 26,000 premises (they’ll also double their headcount over the same period).

In terms of the unlimited residential packages, it’s noted that their 300Mbps, 500Mbps and 1000Mbps tiers for businesses are symmetric, while residential variants of the same plans include an upload speed of 30Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps respectively (a launch promotion is boosting these uploads to 100Mbps, 200Mbps and 300Mbps). Pricing is £50, £60 or £80 a month inc. VAT residential and an 18 month term applies.

The activation fee is £80 on all products, which includes installation from Trooli’s fibre distribution point on the street to the small box they install to the external wall of the property, and the modem and router boxes. The lead-in is either underground or overhead, depending on the existing Openreach delivery method. Around 75% have been underground to date, and 25% aerial.

Meanwhile the outside-to-inside installation is either organised by the customer (kit supplied by Trooli and included in the £80 activation fee), or they can opt for a Trooli installation for £120 where the internal installation is completed by Trooli installers, and the service activated during the same visit.

Finally, we’re expecting some news of Trooli’s future investment and involvement with the government’s new Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) in the not too distant future. As a side note we should add that this is said to be the first UK deployment of ADTRAN’s new 10Gbps FTTP equipment (XGSPON).

UPDATE 11:55am

Added a comment from ADTRAN.

Ronan Kelly, ADTRAN’s CTO for EMEA & APAC, said:

“ADTRAN are delighted to have the opportunity to advance our collaboration with Call Flow under the new Trooli FTTP brand. The Trooli team share ADTRAN’s vision to bring the Gigabit society to all. Trooli, not satisfied with addressing the digital divide impacting these rural communities, is leveraging our symmetric XGSPON technology to actually reverse it.

The true symmetric Gigabit service will ensure these communities can retain their best and brightest within the community, providing them with a foundation upon which they can build viable digital businesses, and create high value jobs for decades to come.

We applaud the disruption that Trooli is bringing through the reuse of existing Openreach assets, ensuring the raised investments are put to work maximising the number of consumers who can avail of these full fibre connections. With the option to overlay ADTRAN’s NGPON2, Trooli’s full fibre access networks have the potential for 100Gbps capacity on each optical distribution network, ensuring a sustainable, long term, growth path.”