Hyperoptic Grow Leadership Team for UK FTTP Broadband Rollout

City focused fibre optic (FTTP/B) broadband ISP Hyperoptic has today appointed Peter White to be its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Naleena Gururani as their Chief People Officer (CPO). Both will work to help them roll-out a “full fibre” network to 2 million UK homes by 2021 and 5 million by 2024.

The move follows last year’s announcement of a £500m deployment plan (here), which is being supported by the investment arm of the Government of Abu Dhabi (Mubadala Investment Company) and others. Hyperoptic’s 1000+ workforce is expected to increase during this growth period to enable the company to scale its operations and become the “UK’s leading full fibre network provider” (difficult given that Openreach has an ambition to reach 15 million with FTTP by around 2025).

At present Hyperoptic’s network claims to cover more than 500,000 premises in parts of around 39 UK “Hyper Cities” (rising to 50 this year), which is usually installed inside large residential apartment buildings (e.g. Multi-Dwelling Units 50+ units / flats) or big office blocks. But they’re also looking to expand into smaller developments later in 2019, possibly even including individual housing (partly by harnessing existing cable ducts and poles).

Dana Tobak, CEO of Hyperoptic, said:

“UK consumers are receiving some of the worst broadband connections in the world, this has led to an unprecedented demand for our gigabit full fibre connections. As part of our ambition to reach 5m homes passed, we are building an Exec team to deliver and disrupt at scale. I am delighted to welcome Peter and Naleena who have demonstrated expertise in driving exponential growth against inertial incumbents.”

Peter joins Hyperoptic from Workshare, a SaaS provider where he was also CFO. Previously he also held CFO positions at Lumata, a business to business mobile marketing technology services group, as well as at České Radiokomunikace a.s., a provider of broadcasting, tower infrastructure and telecommunications services in the Czech Republic. Earlier in his career Peter was Corporate Finance Director at mobile network operator Three UK.

Meanwhile Naleena joins the ISP from telecoms provider Lebara, where she worked for ten years in a range of senior HR roles, most recently as Global HR Director. Prior to that she was Head of International Recruitment at Infosys, a global digital services and consulting firm.