ITS Technology Pick ADTRAN for Full Fibre Faster Britain Network

The ITS Technology Group (its.), which currently manages 36 wholesale full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks across urban parts of the United Kingdom for businesses and ISPs – under the “Faster Britain” branding, has adopted ADTRAN’s open and disaggregated 10Gbps fibre access platform to power its network.

The operator, which is being supported by an investment of £145m from Aviva Investors (here and here), is currently 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 older fixed wireless networks too.

According to the blurb, ITS picked ADTRAN because it uses an open and disaggregated architecture that “eliminates vendor lock-in while providing the flexibility needed to sell services through a diverse set of partners and channels“. The software-defined platform also offers service scalability that enables ITS to support its business today and in the future with minimal infrastructure changes.

The programmability of the new platform reportedly also makes it easy – relatively speaking – for ITS to design flexible, resilient, automated services that can be deployed incrementally based on need or demand.

Mike Goodwin, CTO of ITS Technology Group, said:

“Reliable, high-speed connectivity underpins innovation, growth, productivity and economic opportunities, and that is why we are dedicated to building our Faster Britain networks across the UK. As experts in delivering full-fibre infrastructure and the provisioning of wholesale Gigabit-capable services, we rely on partners like Adtran to provide high-quality solutions to help us stay ahead of the technology curve.

Our partners benefit from our deployment of XGS-PON technology as it allows us to deliver basic broadband for Ethernet services over the same customer connection. We’re impressed with Adtran’s engagement, support and willingness to work with us in achieving our ambitious objectives.”

The move shouldn’t cause too much surprise because a lot of UK alternative network (AltNet) ISPs and full fibre builders have adopted ADTRAN’s XGS-PON hardware for their FTTP and business fibre infrastructure.