Full Fibre UK ISP Trooli Appoints First Chief Operating Officer
Broadband ISP Trooli, which aims to cover a “minimum” of 1 million premises with their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network by the end of 2024, has today announced that they’ve appointed Brian O’Neill to take on the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer (COO).
The alternative network provider, which employs around 200 staff and currently covers parts of Kent, East Sussex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Suffolk in England, next aims to reach 400,000 premises by December 2022 (across c.300 towns and villages) and they’ve so far achieved 170,000 – all within a fairly short space of time (their build is still ramping-up).
The operator originally started life with €30m in backing from the Connecting Europe Broadband Fund (CEBF) and £5m from NatWest, but this was last year boosted by a new £67.5m debt facility agreement (here) to help fund their expansion.
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Naturally, significant new funding also tends to be followed by changes to the leadership team. In this case O’Neill, who is now Trooli’s COO, was previously the company’s Operations Director. Prior to joining Trooli, O’Neill was a senior leader with Vodafone, spending 5-years establishing a new mobile and fibre network in the Middle East. He has more than 25 years’ senior management experience and holds a master’s degree in Telecom Management (part of the BT Master’s Programme).
Andy Conibere, CEO of Trooli, said:
“Brian has been instrumental in driving our success to date and making us the highly respected company we are today. He has established operational excellence across the business since our launch in 2018 and streamlined our customer connection journey for the thousands of delighted customers that have already made the switch to our Full Fibre network.
His promotion is not only well deserved, but an important step in enabling us to continue to grow at scale, whilst maintaining the high standards we set for our network and our customers.”
In his new role, O’Neill will assume full responsibility for Trooli’s operational activity, enabling Conibere to further plot the company’s strategic direction.
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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Relative should have had an installation on 13th Jan. Despite telling them they live in a third floor flat, they turned up without a ladder. Told a week later. Week goes by and as usual with Trooli NO communication.
Now given a new date of the 4th Feb. This from a company that has allowed orders since September and said mid-October when first enquiring. Every single update has been chases, they never contact you.
This relative has been unable to order FTTC as the cabinet is full, and they would need a BT line so has been on 4G since September relying on Trooli to deliver – they have totally failed at every opportunity so far.
Trooli awful communication, and not good enough – do better Trooli. For anyone considering, definitely expect no communication, no updates and the service not being delivered when it should be.
There where similar posts on the last Trooli posting so there is definitely a trend however they are the only FTTP provider even looking at my town right now and the FTTC is rubbish… I will definitely keep the FTTC line though until I have a connection should they roll out as WFH and can’t afford for this sort of issue to occur. (Hopefully this is just a sign of trooli getting a grip on how to rollout being so new and it’ll improve soon.)
They expanded to the top of my cul-de-sac in 2020. I ordered a line and they arrived to install. They took a look and realised on telephone poles on my street but the private road which extends less than 5 metres from my property has a telephone pole overlooking my house albeit the line would have to pass through a tree.
They must have thought it was too much of a headache because they never called or wrote again until I chased them repeatedly.
They then lied about their reasons why they wouldn’t do it stating that they never expanded to the top of my cul-de-sac even though the cables pass way past it.
I fear that with a company already operating in my postcode, BT will not be looking to upgrade my village any time soon. Sigh* Poor fttc it is then.
To be fair with a competitor Openreach are more likely to cover you than not. They seem to view competing as more important than covering new areas. I guess you could be generous and say it because with a competitor all the bad poles and blocked ducts have been fixed.
(Have you tried emailing the CEO style complaint? A few pictures showing the line near your house might get someone from board level to kick up a stink with the install teams. They need subscribers and easy wins aren’t something they should be ignoring.)