Fibre optic UK ISP Trooli (CallFlow) has announced that their on-going deployment of a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband network is set to expand outside of the Kent area and into East Sussex, with two of the first communities to benefit being Crowborough and Uckfield.
The provider, which earlier this year gained a further £5m of funding via a senior facility agreement with NatWest Bank (here) and is also being supported by €30m from the Connecting Europe Broadband Fund (here), currently aims to cover more than 45,000 premises by the end of 2020, then 150,000 by 2022 and 500,000 by the end of 2024.
At the last update in early June 2020 Trooli said they had succeeded in building 200km of optical fibre to cover 26,000 premises (mostly across Kent), although today’s announcement confirms that they’ve since expanded to reach 36,000 premises via 450km of fibre (this equates to a healthy monthly build rate of c.3,000+ premises and that’s pretty good given some of the rural areas they’ve tackled).
Back in Kent it’s noted that Trooli’s FTTP network in Hadlow, Marden, Staplehurst, Headcorn and Romney Marsh is about to go live, and work will shortly begin on connecting Darenth, Hoo St Werburgh and Chattenden.
Andy Conibere, CEO for Trooli, said:
“Kent remains our core market but we are an ambitious, growing business and moving into East Sussex will open up new opportunities for us.
Demand for the service we offer – which is rated as excellent on Trust Pilot and has a network reliability of more than 99.9 per cent – continues to increase as people make greater use of their home broadband, and we are maintaining our momentum in connecting new areas.”
Trooli’s broadband packages tend to cost from £50 inc. VAT per month for an unlimited 300Mbps service and this rises to £80 for 900Mbps+ (one-off installation charges range from £80 for self-install to £120 for a Trooli install). However, the ISP will still need to raise significantly more investment to achieve that ambition of 500,000 premises, but so far their progress has been good.
Good news, they appear to offer a pretty good level of coverage already looking at their ‘live’ coverage map.
It’s interesting they have picked Crowborough which was an area announced by Openreach. Uckfield will probably on the radar for a rural build at some point as well
I’ve looking into this a fair bit more by talking to Trooli a bit further over live chat.
1) The Home Broadband package they offer does not allow for own router, static IP is extra £5/month
2) If you want to use own router, you require a Business Package which starts at £65+VAT / month
3) The business package also requires you to use there bridging service to use your own router, this is £25+VAT month
4) The bridging service is only loaning you a draytek router total cost of £450/18months + VAT.
5) They will not provide PPP details anyway so you still don’t get to use your own router. It would be adtran modem > draytek (with PPP) then own router but its already endpoint on the Draytek so just passing through.