Broadband ISP Sky Business (Sky UK) has today announced that they’ve signed a new long-term agreement that will enable them to sell packages to businesses over the new full fibre network being built by the ITS Technology Group, which operates wholesale full fibre broadband and Ethernet networks (“Faster Britain“) across urban parts of the UK.
The move, which could be seen as a complement to Sky’s recent deal to harness CityFibre’s new FTTP network (here) for their residential focused Sky Broadband division, means that Sky Business will now be able to launch business Ethernet services using the ITS network. The ITS network is currently claimed to be ready to serve more than 25% of all UK commercial premises (465k business/commercial premises).
The partnership builds on the success of the existing relationship Sky Business and ITS forged in 2020, which allows ITS to deliver business connectivity services using Sky’s infrastructure.
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Damian Saunders, MD of Sky Business Hospitality & Wholesale, said:
“Sky Business’s new partnership agreement with ITS will enable us to expand our reach and introduce an exciting new offering to deliver a robust network experience for more businesses across the UK.
This means we are now uniquely positioned to provide our customers with a broader, combined infrastructure, underpinned by the best of both networks and our best-in class service wrap.”
Daren Baythorpe, CEO at ITS, said:
“We are delighted to forge this new agreement with Sky Business which creates a reciprocal relationship, building on our existing partnership. We have invested heavily in our full fibre infrastructure which has been designed and is being rolled out specifically to serve businesses across the UK. Driving business full fibre uptake through Tier 1 partners is at the heart of our growth strategy as we work towards our ambition to be the UK’s best option for last mile business-grade connectivity.”
At present there’s no indication that Sky will be using ITS’ network for residential broadband packages, only business Ethernet solutions.
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It’s not clear from the press releases, but they suggest this is Sky having direct access to ITS fibre only I.e. not any of their active network.
Thats not correct, Sky are procuring Layer 2 ‘lit’ Ethernet Service similar to Openreach EAD.