The business of Fleet Connect
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Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. My next guest started in the fruit markets in Dublin, aged 14, and graduated into the telecom sector by putting Wi-Fi on buses and coaches. He's now been bought out of his latest venture, Rural Wi-Fi. He's still a shareholder with Fleet Connect and a former winner of the Newstalk Business Person of the Month. And he is Patrick Cotter and is sitting in front of me. Good morning, Patrick. Morning, Joe.
How did Patrick Cotter transition from selling fruit to telecoms?
Thanks for having me on. We'll come to your amazing story of risk-taking in a moment. But first, tell us about the deal to sell Rural Wi-Fi. Has that gone through now?
Yes, it is, yeah. Imagine Telecom. approached us probably this time last year, or maybe around Christmas time. And it took about six, seven months to go through. And now the Royal Wi-Fi family have moved over to the Imagine broadband family.
And are you going to stay on to help them? On a consultancy basis, yeah, for about a year, maybe, yeah. You've come a long way from selling fruit at age 14.
Yeah, it's been quite a journey. Sitting here talking to you and going, oh my God, where do I start?
Probably illegal to be working at 14, though, is it? Back then, sure, you get out to work and become somebody. How did you make the leap from selling fruit to telecoms?
I got into the IT sector, I was in sales. And it was sort of by chance because I was selling everything. Pallet racking, bloody, you can name it, I sold it. And then I got in sort of selling telecoms. telephone minutes for aircom. All right. And for photophone and for all, not photophone at the time. And I then went into sort of IT infrastructure, selling routers, selling telephone systems, IPTV systems.
What was the process behind selling Rural Wi-Fi?
And that's how I got the idea to put Wi-Fi on buses and trains.
And... That was the key breakthrough with Fleet Connect. And what did you do? Did you put a load of SIM cards on the buses so they could connect with a wider network?
I basically went on a train to Cork because my car was broken. Typical entrepreneur's story. And I had a new, beautiful, shiny laptop and a new dongle. Remember the dongles you used to hang out? Yes, I do remember them. So I was sitting in the carriage of... of an Irish Rail train. And I noticed everybody, but no one could connect. Everybody's like banging on their computers and this sort of stuff. And I just came to myself, what if I put an antenna on the roof? Because I was in a steel box. So the Wi-Fi doesn't work through steel. Cellular doesn't work through steel. And I put a router in the carriage that could give broadband. That's how I got the idea. I met two... Ex-Ericsson engineers who had the idea as well.
So we formed a company called iChemera. And 38 countries later, the largest Wi-Fi network in the world in 2013 we had.
That was very interesting, though, because you were in sales and suddenly you were talking about creating a new type of technology or using a new technology. And the Swedes had no problems with that.
No. Well, they needed someone commercial, a bit mad, who was going to go out to the customers and present it.
And that's where you came in. That's where I came in.
But, like, I had the idea. I found people that had a similar idea. I brought a company together. And we'd office in Gothenburg, London, America. And we sold the rail side of that a couple of years ago to Equans, a French company. And I kept Fleet Connect on the buses in Ireland and the UK. So that's still, we still do bus air and Dublin bus. And you're still a shareholder with Fleet Connect? I'm the majority shareholder, yeah.
Okay. Now, what's it like being an entrepreneur in Ireland these days? Is it seat of the pants stuff and is it risk all type environment?
Well, see... The word entrepreneur, first of all, I can't spell it, right?
Because I'm an entrepreneur. Neither could George W. Bush, so don't worry about that.
I remember that one. Well, being an entrepreneur, like you have an idea and you don't, you're blinkers. You've got to, it's like a light bulb. You don't see anything. Well, I think what should happen in this country, right?
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