Glide, a market-leader in full fibre business broadband and connectivity provider, has partnered with Connectbase, The Industry Cloud for Connectivity, to simplify and accelerate how service providers worldwide procure and manage connectivity across the UK. Glide became the first UK network service provider to offer its services on Connectbase’s Configure Price Quote (CPQ) platform, The Connected World. The partnership enables service providers worldwide to access the UK network footprint with location-based intelligence and automated and standardised quoting. 

Glide has more than 2,000 km of dedicated fibre network spanning the UK with 14 metropolitan dark fibre networks in major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Glide’s fibre network also reaches some 400 business parks, otherwise poorly served by other service providers. Its multi-terabit network provides last-mile connectivity to enterprise locations and campuses at up to 100Gbit/s. The Connected World platform enables more service providers to benefit from Glide’s extensive network footprint, continual fibre network rollouts, and agile service delivery model. 

“Our partnership with Connectbase provides a global community of service providers immediate access to our network services and connectivity options across the UK. As an altnet, we are always looking at new and innovative ways to present our services and enable local and global organisations to move with greater agility when connecting users,” said Tim Pilcher, CEO at Glide. “We are thrilled to be the first UK service provider on The Connected World platform and eagerly anticipate the opportunity to strengthen our partnership with Connectbase.” 

Connectbase’s The Connected World platform offers users access to more than 300 connectivity buyers and sellers with intelligence related to 2.6 billion locations across more than 150 countries. It simplifies network planning, identifying suppliers, and pricing network services within a single automated platform. The Connect World Platform removes the need for time-consuming and resource-intensive manual procurement processes and replaces it with an intelligent and digitally enabled model. 

“We have a large number of enquiries about UK network footprint from our global user base and we are excited to offer Glide’s UK connectivity services on our platform. Glide shares our commitment to simplicity and service agility and is a great fit for our first partner in the UK,” said Ben Edmond, Founder and CEO of Connectbase. “Our partnership with Glide is another milestone on our global expansion as we see increasing demand for a simple and intelligence-driven model for buying and selling local network services across the globe.”

Glide has been constructing fibre networks for data centres, service providers, systems integrators, carriers and the public sector for over a decade. It offers redundant dark fibre and managed lit fibre networks across the UK and is continually growing its network with new construction in key markets.