Seeby Woodhouse of Voyager is set to employ Tony Ripper as National Sales Manager. Up until resigning from Orcon in the last two weeks, Ripper was heading wholesale sales for Woodhouse's former company.

Although we we’ve been unable to reach Ripper, it’s understood that when a restructure of the wholesale division at Orcon started, Ripper reached out to his old colleague Woodhouse. He is currently on gardening leave with Orcon and won’t be joining Voyager until his contractual obligations are complete.

Ripper’s first contact with Woodhouse was back when he handled the Orcon account for Telecom Wholesale. Ripper then joined Orcon before Woodhouse sold the business in 2007 to Kordia.

While Voyager has been offering wholesale services for quite some time, Ripper clearly brings the expertise and focus required to significantly ramp up this part of the business. The wholesale offering was recently expanded beyond internet connections and domains to web hosting with the acquisition of Net24. Read our full story here.

We briefly spoke with Woodhouse about his plans, and he explained that the Voyager promise is around high quality customer service. Ripper, he explained has a rather old-school approach, offering customers personal service that is missing from the large ISPs in NZ.

Woodhouse explained that while his team are currently finalising their plans for nationwide UFB coverage, they’re having significant success selling VDSL connections at present. This is mainly because the top five ISPs aren’t focused on VDSL offerings, either continuing to push ADSL or skipping to UFB. Read our story about Voyager's VDSL plans here.