New hires accelerate expansion at TasmaNet

TasmaNet has announced the appointment of two former Telstra senior executives to accelerate the company’s aggressive expansion into mainland Australia. Chief Marketing Officer Rob Villanti and Chief Financial Officer Neil Louis join the team that connected the first nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet service in Australia and continue to lead the market in selling the transformational product. 

Villanti rose through the ranks during a 15-year spell at Telstra including a recent leadership role responsible for digitisation of the Global Connectivity and Networks portfolio, a key strategic pillar of the company’s product and network transformation. Earlier roles included General Manager of the Managed Wi-Fi portfolio, doubling revenue in 12 months through increased adoption of the Cisco Meraki stack, and General Manager of Mobile Applications where he established a new team responsible for driving adoption of Connected Tablets into the SMB and Enterprise segment in partnership with leading SaaS productivity applications such as Docusign. 

Louis is also a former Telstra Executive Director having a number of senior finance and operations roles during a 19 year career. Most recently he led Telstra’s Customer Connect function which was responsible for all fixed and mobile connections including those migrating to the nbn™. Earlier roles included being the Head of Telstra’s successful public Wi-Fi launch, Telstra Air and leading Telstra’s Mergers and Acquisition function for seven years. Prior to joining Telstra, Louis spent 10 years in banking. 

TasmaNet CEO Elizabeth Aris said, “Neil and Rob are world-class telecom executives and bring experience critical to TasmaNet’s national expansion. We are delighted to have executives of this calibre on the team.” 

TasmaNet uses nbn™ Enterprise Ethernet to deliver symmetrical Internet speeds up to 1 Gbps to businesses around the country over dedicated fibre installed to each site. These uncontended speeds are 10 times faster than the top nbn™ download speeds of 100 Mbps offered by most Internet service providers. Uploads using conventional nbn™ services are also much slower. 

“TasmaNet connected the first Enterprise Ethernet service in Australia earlier this year, and recently sealed a large deal with Catholic Education Tasmania,” said Villanti. “Now we are targeting organisations across Australia that use large files, such as financial services, education, real estate and medical practices.” 

TasmaNet is one of very few nbn™ resellers accredited to provide Enterprise Ethernet, which is much less expensive than the alternative products previously available to customers.