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Confusion appears to have gripped residents in the rural Kent (England) village of Hunton after Trooli, an alternative network operator and broadband ISP, informed local customers that they had been unable to extend their new full fibre (FTTP) network into the area, and now planned to switch-off their existing copper line infrastructure too.
The original article on this situation, which has been covered by the BBC News, is lacking some necessary context for all this. The legacy “copper” network being talked about here actually reflects a Sub-Loop Unbundled (SLU) service using Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which was built by Call Flow Solutions (better known today as Trooli) some years ago. Trooli itself has never built an FTTC network and only does FTTP.
Regular readers might recall that we wrote about a similar situation in two other Kent villages, Stansted and parts of Fairseat, last year that use the same technology from Call Flow/Trooli (here). The move is partly related to the fact that SLU will also be impacted by Openreach and BT’s ongoing efforts to retire their legacy copper-based phone (PSTN) and line rental (WLR) services by the end of January 2027.