Etc., the incubation team in BT Group’s Digital unit boosting the businesses of the future announced that it has entered into a £5 million deal with Altitude Angel, a world-leading UTM (Unified Traffic Management) technology provider, as the two businesses scale the UK drone industry and support the development of the UK’s drone superhighway, set to be the largest and longest network of its kind in the world.

UTM is the software platform and infrastructure needed to allow drones to fly safely, without a pilot, over large distances. The £5 million deal will accelerate Altitude Angel’s roll-out of its transformative ARROW technology, which detects and identifies drones, while also enabling drones to share the airspace with crewed aviation safely and securely.

Richard Parker, CEO and founder, Altitude Angel, said: “With BT Group, Altitude Angel has a partner which shares its ambition to make automated commercial drone operations at scale in the UK a day-to-day reality. Combining our ARROW technology, which allows crewed and uncrewed aircraft to share the same skies, safely and securely, with BT Group’s significant communications infrastructure, we can quickly bring ARROW to the masses.  This will provide the UK with the first nationwide drone superhighways, unlocking the potential of this new and innovative technology and revolutionising business operations in countless industries.”

Tom Guy, Managing Director, Etc. - BT Group, said: “At Etc., we support businesses like Altitude Angel, who have game changing ideas that benefit from BT Group’s scale and our agile approach to growth. This partnership is a natural extension to BT Group’s work building the leading network in the UK, supporting the UTM industry that sits adjacent to our core business.”