UK fibre network Freedom Fibre has appointed Lee Sutch to head up the business channel.
The Manchester startup was founded by telecoms network entrepreneur Neil McArthur and recently secured £100m of scale-up funding.
Sutch previously worked at Verastar and TalkTalk Business and will lead the B2B strategy for sales, partners, and the onboarding of business customers.
Freedom Fibre is looking to rollout its services to two million premises in the North West and is already offering ultra-fast broadband to almost 20,000 homes across parts of Cheshire and Greater Manchester.
Freedom Fibre secures £100m to fund high-speed broadband rollout
The company is on track to reach 70,000 premises by the end of this year and expects to boost customer penetration through its wholesale agreement with TalkTalk to use its fibre optic connections.
Founder and CEO Neil McArthur said: “I am delighted Lee is joining the team at Freedom Fibre as head of B2B. He is joining just at the right time. B2B is an important part of strategy to build a converged consumer and B2B enabled FTTP network. Having agreed a funding package totalling £100m in June this year, Freedom Fibre has now been able to launch the planned B2B programme alongside the scale up plans for consumer fibre products.
“Lee has extensive experience in the B2B channel and is well known to many colleagues at Freedom Fibre, having been part of the B2B team way back in our Opal Telecoms days.”
Rural broadband specialist plans to double in size with opening of new HQ
Sutch said: “I’m really excited to be joining the team at Freedom Fibre and at such a crucial time. Having worked with most of the team in the early days at Opal Telecom, I know the passion, tenacity, and winning attitude that the business already has built into its very core. As soon as you overlay the creative build and vision from Neil McArthur, along with the recent investment, I knew that this was going to be a disruptive business at the forefront of fibre delivery that I just needed to be part of.
“Having built up successful partner channels for Verastar, XLN, and TalkTalk Business I am really looking forward to helping the team to build an industry leading and enviable B2B wholesale partner operation.
“The Freedom Fibre network is delivering the very latest in technology allowing us to open up a vast array of market disruptive fibre and ethernet services backed by creative deployment.
“Within my first week, I joined one of Freedom Fibre’s build partners, NCD Networks, to delve into how the network is being built with residential and business connectivity in mind. I was impressed by the high level of engineering skills deploying the very latest fibre optic technology in the streets of Irlam.”