Altnet Broadband ISP Quickline Brings Tech Support Back to UK
Alternative rural broadband ISP Quickline, which is building a gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) and fixed wireless (FWA) broadband network across rural parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), has today announced that they’ve moved their Customer Technical Support Team in-house. Previously, it was outsourced to a company based in South Africa.
The provider is currently being backed by a private investment of £500m from Northleaf Capital Partners and aims to cover 200,000 premises with FTTP by the end of 2025 (up from 65,000 premises in Nov 2023). But its technical support was, until recently, being provided through an outsourcing arrangement via a company in South Africa.
The good news is that the ISP has now formed a 15-strong team of first-line support agents, which will be based at their HQ in East Yorkshire. The move means customers now speak directly to local experts who understand rural life in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and the importance of staying connected.
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The new in-house team will sit alongside Quickline’s existing Customer Service and Sales teams, under a new structure led by Michelle Simpson (pictured). She has been appointed as Director of Sales and Service Operations, a brand-new role that brings all core customer-facing teams together. Michelle has been the provider’s Head of Sales for the past 3 years.
Quickline CEO, Sean Royce, said:
“This is a big moment for Quickline and for our customers. Having a locally based technical support team means when our customers need help, they’re talking to someone who understands their community, not just the technology. We’re proud to be employing more people here in Yorkshire, right in the heart of where we deliver our broadband services. It’s all part of our promise to offer a uniquely northern, truly local service that goes beyond just connectivity.”
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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CommunityFibre could learn something. Woeful support. Asked for them to clear the MAC table because I was using a new router. Their SA-based support managed to tell me it’s impossible to use my own router, “sir, a MAC is a computer, it has nothing to do with internet”, and to top it off, confused my account with someone else’s, reading me their CGNAT IPv4 address.
Pre 2023 CFL was great, which makes the current state of affairs a shame. Would be brilliant if they’re taken over by CityFibre so we can use competent ISPs.
It makes more sense Netomnia buys them instead of Cityfibre since the CEO used to be the same
This is a fake comment if I’ve ever seen one
Not that I am an expert in networking by any means, not by a long way, I do kind of know what a Mac table is, but an ISP would not a list of peoples routers MAC surly, or am I looking at this wrong?
Ad47uk – CFL uses DHCP to provide the WAN IP. If the router MAC changes, it assigns a new IP. After 3 or so MAC address changes, it stops providing a DHCP lease until it’s cleared or the entries lapse.
I had to explain Sub netting IPv4 to a ‘technical support manager’ in Durban, SA, verbally, and via email.
If you are unfortunate to have to contact them, then you are in for a very painful experience.They are truly clueless, and above all,incompetent.
I had similar issues when they changed to the Boundless backend and instigate CGNAT. Weeks worth of poor performance which was a painful experience.
Great news!
I recently had to contact QL’s tech support team based in SA. They were very good and sorted my issue.
A UK based tech support team is a good move by QL. This can only increase customer confidence and their Trustpilot score of 4.6/5*!
This is great news that they have listened to feedback.
Sadly to late for me to stay with them after having 2 months of downtime in just over 8 months,being ignored and ignored by the terrible tech team.
I hope this changes the reputation to they have as I’d much rather see a local Yorkshire company succeed over OR