Rural ISP Truespeed Appoint Ex-KCOM Man to Build Wholesale
Rural UK full fibre broadband provider Truespeed, which is currently rolling out a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across parts of South West England (e.g. Somerset), has today appointed one of KCOM’s former veterans – Henry West – to join its executive team as Commercial Director.
The ISP, which is being fuelled by an investment of £75m from Aviva Investors (here), currently aims to cover 75,000 premises across parts of rural South West England by 2021 and after that they hold an aspiration of reaching 200,000 by 2025 (i.e. a demand-led deployment where 30% of a community needs to sign-up).
The provider now appears to be beefing up their executive team and as part of that they’ve appointed Henry West to be their Commercial Director, which tasks him with organising the company’s sales strategy and developing plans for a future wholesale offering that will see the firm appoint IT resellers and work with other UK ISPs.
Advertisement
Henry joins Truespeed from business provider FluidOne, where he spent 18 months as Director of Channel Sales. Prior to that he spent 12 years at communications and IT services provider KCOM, most recently as their Head of Channel Sales.
Evan Wienburg, CEO of Truespeed, said:
“It’s great to have Henry on board. As a local Somerset man with an impressive track record in this industry, he is the ideal candidate to supercharge our business offerings and help more businesses in the region get the reliable, ultrafast broadband connectivity they deserve.
Plus his experience in building and growing indirect channels will help us to lay the foundations for our future wholesale play.”
The move into wholesale provision is a fairly common thing for growing fibre networks to do and is a good way to further leverage the new infrastructure they’re building. Sadly though, aside from a few piecemeal announcements, we haven’t had many concrete updates from Truespeed concerning their build progress so far.
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.
« COVID-19 Impact – Openreach’s Network Traffic by UK Region UPDATE
Rural UK FTTH ISP B4RN Launches 10Gbps Home Broadband »
Truespeed have been building in North Somerset, a new cab appeared in Kenn a few weeks ago, they’re closing in on me in Claverham from one side and Gigaclear from the other, I suspect I’ll suddenly have a choice of 2 FTTP AltNets at some point in the future.
I’d be surprised if you get 2 choices in a rural area. Its starting to become common enough in parts of cities but the economics make no sense @rural.
Gigaclear & Truespeed are certainly overbuilding in some places for example Compton Martin in the Chew valley https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#15/51.3074/-2.6512/gigaclear/truespeed/
Last time I drove through there I noticed a lineup of Gigaclear, Truespeed and OR FTTC Cabs all on the same spot in the middle of the village I must get a photo next time I’m able to go past
That would be very helpful Sam 🙂 .
Thats a puzzler. Assuming perhaps they are meeting at a backhaul point you might see some potential to overlap but otherwise the numbers just can’t add up for both Gigaclear & Truespeed (BT are there as legacy)
I’m aware for many villages with fttp which butt up against each other. BT/Giga is common in the SW but they generally don’t overlap except some fttpoD
Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s unavoidable (communities on a primary fibre route etc.). Certainly though overbuild among smaller players doesn’t make as much sense, but these are commercial businesses so everybody has competition in mind on some level. On upside, it would be nice as a consumer to live in an area with that sort of choice :).
Similar in Lympsham where GC have built and TS building soon.
I’m glad every part of our nations England, Wales, NI and Scotland are getting the investments from alt-ISPs fibre services to the communities of every single one of those communities.
Gigaclear have told most of Kenn they will NOT be installing, so its free for Truespeed to mop up. However the Gigaclear ducting goes past my house and ends shortly after and I have no letter so I suspect I may have a choice if I wait long enough. It appears they are still intent on completing sections of ducting that are not yet joined together but I cannot get any real timescales from them for my area and there are so few houses I’m surprised they bother.