UK ISP Trooli to Shut BDUK Funded Hybrid Rural Broadband Network

Network operator and ISP Trooli (Call Flow) has confirmed to ISPreview that a small number of their customers are at risk of disconnection, which will occur when they shut one of their old hybrid wireless and fibre optic broadband networks in rural Hampshire (England). This was originally deployed around ten years ago with public funding (Building Digital UK).

At present, Trooli is focused on deploying their FTTP gigabit broadband network (covering 410,000 premises) across towns and large semi-rural villages in parts of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, East Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, West Sussex and Wiltshire in England. As well as parts of North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire and Fife in Scotland (formerly part of Axione UK’s network).

However, in the past, Trooli – formerly better known as Call Flow Solutions – did also deploy a number of hybrid broadband networks into several rural communities using Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and sub-loop unbundled Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technologies. One such deployment occurred as part of a £1.258m (state aid) BDUK Market Test Pilot back in 2014-16.

The aim of the aforementioned pilot was to deliver “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) to poorly served residents in the hard-to-reach rural areas of Bramdean and Ropley, including the hamlet of Monkwood. The service has been working reasonably well since then, at least it was until earlier this year when residents in Monkwood were informed that their service would be terminated at the end of March 2025.

What went wrong in Monkwood

The above situation appeared to be in response to local connectivity problems, which started in January 2025. “We’re aware of an issue impacting customer connections in the Monkwood area. Our networking team are aware of the issue and are currently investigating the cause,” said the statement on Call Flow’s website (dated to 5th Jan 2025), which has remained the same since then.

Call Flow/Trooli followed that up later by issuing another update directly to residents, which identified that the “fault itself is related to a particular part of our network which is connected via a radio link“, specifically a “natural limitation of this radio link“. But then came the really bad news.

The provider’s message revealed that this “is not an issue that we will technically be able to resolve” and, after exploring “all other options for replacing” that link, the ISP admitted they had been “unable to find a commercially viable, alternative solution” and said the service would be “terminated” at the end of March 2025.

On March 18th, residents of the nearby village of Four Marks were similarly told they would also be losing their Call Flow service at the end of May 2025, which prompted people in another nearby village, Ropley, to worry that they might be next to suffer the same fate. Suffice to say that ISPreview has raised this with Trooli and they’ve since provided more information.

A Spokesperson for Trooli told ISPreview:

“In 2016, Call Flow was granted funding by BDUK for an experimental project delivering a hybrid solution, primarily mixing Fibre To the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technologies. The aim was to deliver superfast broadband to residents in the hard-to-reach areas of Bramdean and Ropley, including the hamlet of Monkwood. In the nine years since then, Trooli’s Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) broadband network has commercially overbuilt to the majority of the homes covered by this experimental service, providing them with an ultrafast, modern alternative.

Some of the original network has not been commercially viable for Trooli to overbuild. Given the age of the network, now approaching nine years, some components have started to fail and have become too difficult and costly to maintain. Consequently, it is no longer commercially viable to maintain some parts of the original Call Flow network being delivered to a handful of premises in the Monkwood area.

The planned withdrawal of service at the end of March was shared with the affected households in January, with free internet offered throughout February and March. Over this period, most customers have migrated to alternative services, which have developed substantially in the intervening nine years, most typically 4G. We continue to work with the very small number of customers who continue to use our legacy solution.

In an entirely separate situation, we have been in touch with a number of customers whose broadband service is at threat from Openreach’s Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) switch off. These customers, who are connected to the SLU/FTTC SMPF broadband solution employed by Call Flow, were originally informed that their service would be switched off in May.

However, as the Openreach WLR switch-off is not scheduled to take place until the end of the year, we have decided to use this time to continue our attempt to find an improved resolution with Openreach. This postponement has been communicated to potentially impacted customers.

We will, of course, provide further updates to these customers and keep them updated on how our conversations with Openreach progress.”

In fairness to Trooli/Call Flow, the operator did deliver on their contracted commitment and has actually kept the hybrid broadband network running longer than they had pledged. As above, many of the premises that were originally reached by this network have also since been overbuilt by the operator’s newest FTTP infrastructure, which marks a big improvement over the original service.

Ultimately, nothing lasts forever, but the hope is that a new home can be found for all of those affected by the current problems, although a few may yet be left with little in the way of viable alternatives before they’re disconnected.