E101 - Johnny Rae at DialledIN Limited

On episode 101 of The Route to Networking podcast, our Director James Dean was joined by Jonny Rae, the Owner of DialledIN Limited. Jonny founded DialledIN Limited in June 2022, as a new business owner it was great to hear what made him decide to start up and his experience so far. They discuss all things Alt-Net and ISPs and their mutual love for the industry.  

 At just 16, Jonny was a market trader selling sports returns which he did for a couple of years. There was a man named Mark James who was a Telecom veteran and had previously sold a large Telecom company and had started again but with a lot more cash. When Jonny was 18, Mark said he wanted to take him on as an apprentice in Telecoms. One of his first tasks was understanding the products before launching them into sales and he did that for around 6 and a half years. His journey into the space had begun! 

He went to a company called Union Street, which was a major software vendor that provides billy software that enables telecom resellers to receive data from the carriers and wholesales, “jolly it up” and present it to a bill.  

 He lost his dad in March which prompted him to go big or go home and this was when he decided to take the lead and start up DialledIN. He has big plans on the horizon and is doing more of what he loves which is talking about telecoms, MSP, IT etc.  

 Alt-Net… 

There are currently 63 good Alt-Nets and around 128 full-fibre ISPs in the UK. In the Telecom channel space (the resellers), they are all used to using one ISP or two ISPs that sit on the Openreach network. Everyone knows what the pricing is, but Jonny says: “Move over because we have some pucker people coming into play”. With the Alt-Nets, they are bringing you full fibre products at an affordable price and the contention ratio is far better, so the service you get is higher quality based on their network not being as big so not as many people are using it. He is excited about this because for a reseller this is a bit of a boom for them.  

The problems that the Alt-Net space is having at the moment are the Alt-Nets and the resellers wanting to take the Alt-Nets connectivity. They are digging up fibre around towns all over the UK and if you were a reseller and wanted to use an Alt-Net, there’s a problem because they don’t know who has fibre where. So, this is where Jonny has started to work on something that will fix this problem.  

The idea behind starting DialledIN came from when he was doing a stint for a Telecom reseller down South. He had 15 different Alt-Nets on with distant salespeople over the phones pushing products. If there was no connectivity on the Openreach network, they would call and say who has got fibre in this location and he would know because he spent time with all the Alt-Nets but for the other salespeople, they weren’t going to sit and check 15 different portals. The more research he’s done on the Alt-Net space the more he can see it’s desperately needed.  

 Another challenge he can see in the space is the pressure of being on. They’ve had the money, dug up the fibre now they desperately need to get connections on.  

Jonny shares his plans for the future, alongside a brilliant (and hilarious) story of his best vendor night out. Don’t miss it, tune in now!