Strategic hires strengthen Airband’s leadership team

Rural broadband specialist Airband has announced two senior appointments in response to growing demand for its services. Steve Holford joins as commercial director and Ian Robinson joins from EE to head up a new government-funded health-care research and development project.

New hires bring industry experience

Both are industry veterans with decades of experience and knowledge and the appointments come as the company announces integration of fibre to the premises (FTTP) across even more of its project areas and will be key in supporting the company’s planned growth for 2020.

Steve Holford brings more than two decades of IT and telecoms experience to the commercial director role and joins Airband from Hyperoptic, where he was director of operations and previously headed up Hyperoptic’s customer experience. Prior to that, he held manager and director-level positions at e-commerce specialist UK2 Group and telecoms and mobile giant Virgin.

Ian Robinson has been appointed Airband’s senior project manager and will be leading Airband’s partnership in a West Mercia health research and development project aimed at transforming rural healthcare. With more than 20 years’ experience managing projects and stakeholder relationships within the telecoms industry, Ian joins Airband from EE where he was a senior project manager.

Growth demonstrates leadership in rural broadband

Redmond Peel, Airband founder and director, commented: “We are really pleased to welcome Steve and Ian to Airband, particularly at such an exciting time for our business as we create a business model that can meet the demand for better broadband in the UK’s rural areas. Covid-19 has demonstrated how essential connectivity is for all communities – but especially for rural communities and we are determined to increase our capacity and streamline our deployment so we can help as many people as possible enjoy the connectivity they need.

“These leadership appointments will further strengthen the team and prepare Airband for the next phase of growth. And our human resources recruitment officer Richard Orme is leading the roll-out of our strategic hiring plan as we seek to expand our engineering teams and project admin teams to facilitate growth.”

Steve Holford said he was delighted to be joining Airband at such an exciting time. “We have a tremendous opportunity to grow further and consolidate Airband’s reputation as a rural broadband specialist. It’s refreshing to be part of a mission to empower rural communities by helping them access the kind of connectivity that transforms both home and business.”

Airband continues to grow rapidly

Airband’s workforce has tripled in the last two years, from 48 employees in 2018 to the current total of 180 and a recent wellbeing survey revealed high staff satisfaction. Since January 2020, Airband has made 100 new appointments – mostly across its engineering and admin teams.

Join Airband: be part of something special!

Airband’s wider recruitment drive continues as it seeks to increase its capacity for faster roll-out of its fibre and wireless networks and it is currently recruiting for fibre engineers and civil engineers in Devon, Oxfordshire, Midlands and Shropshire as well as office-based roles at its Worcester headquarters. All roles can be found on its career page.