NEWS
AssetHUB and ITS join forces to accelerate fibre rollouts in major UK cities
busy streets,” said Rob Leenderts, CEO, AssetHUB.“ Through collaboration and sharing of assets, Altnets and fibre builders can avoid unnecessary dig costs and overbuild as well as speed up deployments to businesses and amenities that require urgent connectivity upgrades.
“ Having a centralised platform that maps infrastructure availability and streamlines asset enquiries can also help network builders decrease the time to market of their services,” said Leenderts.
Organisations delivering high-speed connectivity in UK cities have been given a boost through a new partnership between asset reuse specialist AssetHUB and ITS.
The collaboration allows Altnets, enterprises, government units, local councils and carriers to purchase ITS’ dark fibre assets via AssetHUB’ s secure marketplace for buying and selling existing infrastructure. The move reflects a joint commitment to faster and more efficient fibre deployments through smarter planning and reuse.
“ Fibre rollouts in big cities often means weeks of roadworks, noise and other disruptions which frustrate residents and obstruct already
Kevin McNulty, Strategy Director, ITS, said:“ Our strategic partnership with AssetHUB is an important step in our ambition to scale through collaboration. By making our infrastructure discoverable at the point of planning we’ re supporting faster rollouts, reduced disruption and greater visibility of critical fibre routes in some of the UK’ s most indemand urban areas.”
The partnership also enables ITS to use AssetHUB’ s marketplace as a buyer, sourcing infrastructure to support its own expansion plans.
AssetHUB is a secure, centralised marketplace for the purchasing and selling of telecommunications assets, connectivity and services in the UK. ITS operates the UK’ s largest dedicated business-grade local access fibre network.
Zurich’ s Agentic AI Hyper Challenge generates over 200 prototypes to accelerate insurance innovation
Over 1,000 participants across 40 + countries developed more than 200 working prototypes in just four weeks, addressing real-world use cases across four challenges: underwriting, marketing and sales, claims and actuarial analysis in financial reporting. Potential use cases cover a wide functional spectrum – including AI agents that automate research, analysis and risk triage for small commercial specialty lines; support claims liability decisions for motor and liability lines of business; and intelligent systems that generate financial reports, manage SEO and optimise marketing campaign performance.
“ These results are a strong foundation,” said Joel Agard, Group Head of Innovation.“ They demonstrate the potential of Agentic AI to reshape insurance processes through practical co-creation – while keeping the positive impact for our customers and our business at the center throughout.”
The Hyper Challenge is part of Zurich’ s global startup programme, the Zurich Innovation Championship and reflects the Group’ s unique approach to open innovation – bringing together internal teams, external engineers, startups, and established technology companies in a hackathon style format to validate how Agentic AI can enhance decision-making and improve customer experience, while driving efficiencies – with human touch remaining critical throughout.
“ We’ ve seen incredible engagement – from our global business units to our external partners,” said Antony Elliott, Head of Digital R & D.“ This initiative is a powerful example of how we can quickly get hands on with emerging technologies to strengthen our capabilities and better serve our customers.”
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