The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Edinburgh-based UK alternative broadband network operator and ISP GoFibre, Neil Conaghan, has now quietly also been named as the Interim CEO of network provider Wildanet – they’re doing something similar to GoFibre, albeit at the other end of the United Kingdom.
Just to recap. GoFibre is currently busy building their gigabit-capable broadband network across rural parts of Scotland, the Scottish Borders areas and also Northumberland in North England. The operator, which is backed by £164m of investment from Gresham House (here), has so far managed to build their network to cover over 120,000 premises (RFS) across 40 “local areas”.
By comparison, Wildanet, which only just lost its last CEO (here) and is also being backed by an investment of £100m from Gresham House (plus £35m from the National Wealth Fund), is deploying a mix of full fibre and wireless broadband networks across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon in South West England.
Suffice to say that both operators share the same primary investment partner, although there’s also a fair bit of geographic distance between the two. Nevertheless, ISPreview has noted that the CEO of GoFibre, Neil Conaghan, recently updated his LinkedIn profile (‘Experience’ section) at the end of last week to state the following: “In addition to my existing role as CEO at GoFibre, I am fulfilling the role of Interim CEO at Wildanet.”
We had caught some whispers about this on Wednesday last week and emailed Wildanet’s PR firm to find out more. But they did not respond to provide a comment.
UPDATE 12:16pm
Wildanet has now issued the following comment.
Martin Harriman, Chairman of Wildanet, said:
“We are delighted to confirm that Neil Conaghan has been appointed Wildanet’s Interim Chief Executive Officer following the recent departure of Helen Wylde-Archibald.
Neil is a highly experienced and successful CEO, he currently serves as the CEO of GoFibre, another alternative network provider backed by Gresham House, and will continue in this role as well as assuming leadership of Wildanet in an interim capacity working with the senior management team to ensure continued delivery of the strategic plan to provide gigabit speed full fibre broadband to underserved communities in the South-West of England.
Neil brings extensive industry experience and a strong track record of leading fibre broadband rollouts. His dual role will support the ongoing execution of Wildanet’s Project Gigabit contracts and the broader strategic ambitions of both Wildanet and GoFibre.”