Brsk is a full fibre broadband provider focused on connecting under-served towns and cities, particularly those located in dense suburban areas more likely to suffer from poor internet connectivity speeds or who have only experienced an inferior broadband technology service to date.
Brsk has rolled out fibre connectivity to over 266,000 homes across Manchester, South Birmingham/West Midlands, Bradford and Lancashire, with its sights set on covering one million homes across the UK by 2026.
In the UK, brsk has established itself as having one of the fastest growing full fibre broadband networks in the country, drawing on the heritage of its founders of large-scale Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) deployments in South Africa. The success of brsk wouldn’t be possible without key strategic partnerships, including its engagement with Neos Networks.
The challenge
Brsk decided to take a unique approach in the market by focusing on delivering strong community engagement and awareness before building out their network, thus ensuring that the client-base was already in place once the network was made available.
Brsk also took measures to ensure it didn’t overbuild, focusing on areas that needed connectivity the most, namely densely populated suburban areas.
To deliver this connectivity, brsk needed to work with a backhaul provider who could connect the identified regions back to its core network, while also providing high capacity connectivity that allowed for scalability.
The project came with tight time frames, due to brsk committing to firm connectivity deadlines in order to meet customer demand. It was therefore imperative the company found a partner who could deliver to these timings, while delivering efficiencies and enabling faster connectivity speeds to brsk’s customers.
The outcome
Neos Networks’ high capacity network spans the length of the UK making it an ideal partner to support brsk with diverse national backhaul services. Neos Networks has invested heavily in the growth of its own network, more than doubling its reach over the past few years, with 550 BT exchanges now on-net. The efforts to widen this footprint has meant that its fibre network is available across the country, which has allowed brsk to bring broadband to previously overlooked areas.
Work began in March 2021, with 10Gbps backhaul being rolled out by Neos Networks initially. The first delivery was completed in June 2021. As customer numbers have grown, Neos and brsk have worked hand-in-hand to migrate these networks to 100Gbps Optical services, quickly scaling to meet new and dynamic requirements.
Brsk and Neos Networks have continued to work collaboratively to ensure each network has redundant connectivity in place in order to maintain a high level of service reliability for its customers. To identify the right connectivity provisions for 10Gbps services, the brsk team frequently used Neos Networks’ online pricing portal, LIVEQUOTE. The automated self-service tool has been instrumental for brsk in providing access to real-time pricing, quote comparisons and instant orders.
By the end of June 2023, brsk had provided 100Gbps to key regions across the North of England and the Midlands, helping to meet growing customer demand for reliable, high-speed connectivity.
“Neos Networks have been supportive of our growth plans from the get-go. They’ve worked closely with us to ensure that our customers are delivered a network that is both high capacity and highly resilient. Their UK-wide national exchange footprint has allowed us to quickly scale backhaul services. This has been instrumental to our business, enabling the fast and efficient rollout of FTTP networks to our customers.”
Head of Networks, Jody Botham, brsk
