Gloucester Full Fibre Network from ITS Goes Live for 2,100 Businesses

The ITS Technology Group (its.), which now operates 36 wholesale full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks across urban parts of the UK, has today announced that their latest “Faster Britain” deployment has just gone live across part of Gloucester – giving more than 2,100 businesses access to a new 10Gbps capable network.

The operator’s “Faster Britain” network is currently still aiming to “pass more than 500,000 / 25% of UK business premises” by the end of the year, although this figure may include some of their fixed wireless networks too. The latest deployment of their open access full fibre infrastructure in Gloucester adds another 2,100 premises toward that target.

The Gloucester full fibre network is 8km long and spans across the city from Gloucester Quays through to the Olympus Business Park Quedgeley, while passing many business areas including the transformation of Gloucester Food Dock and King’s Quarter. ITS have said they’re also committed to expanding the network to connect the Cheltenham Enterprise Zone, which will be “completed later this year“.

The company’s entire network is now home to 300 plus IT resellers, as well as various Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Managed Service Providers (MSP). Partners can access the network footprint as a layer 1 (dark fibre), layer 2 (wholesale), or as a layer 3 (internet) connection.

Daren Baythorpe, CEO of ITS, said:

“I am delighted that our Faster Britain network will make Gloucester’s business community among the best connected in the UK. Full fibre is as important as any other infrastructure such as road and rail, and is vital to the local economy, attracting inward investment, and creating more job opportunities.

As a country, we are now on a timeframe to step away from the reliance on ‘so called’ fibre connectivity services that utilise copper as these legacy networks will be retired from 2025. We have worked hard with our Faster Britain service partners to develop a suite of scalable, flexible full fibre connectivity solutions to suit business demands across all industry sectors.”

As usual, ITS said the latest fibre spine has been built by reusing existing ducts, which is fairly common these days and minimises the highly disruptive road digs that are so often associated with this type of engineering project.