BT has invested £5m in a startup seeking to create a drone corridor across southern and central England to carry cargo and other supplies. The telecoms group’s digital hub, Etc, is investing the money into the drone firm Altitude Angel, to support its work on Project Skyway. The scheme would involve a 165-mile drone corridor created above Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry and Rugby – in what the two firms hope will become the UK’s drone superhighway and the largest and longest network of its kind in the world. The long-term aim is to create a network connecting towns and cites, as well as linking transport and package delivery hubs across the country. Altitude Angel is working on software that detects and identifies drones, while also enabling the small aircraft to safely share airspace with other, crewed aircraft. Under the £5m deal, BT Group will provide connectivity and network infrastructure to allow Altitude Angel to roll out its software. Tom Guy, the managing director of BT Group’s Etc hub, said: “At Etc, we support businesses like Altitude Angel, who have gamechanging 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 [Unified Traffic Management] industry that sits adjacent to our core business.” As part of the deal, Dave Pankhurst, BT Group’s director of drones, will take a seat on Altitude Angel’s board. Guy added: “This deal also brings with it a stake in Altitude Angel … Together we bring unparalleled drone solutions to market, underpinned by digital innovation and our network strength, as we open the skies to solve genuine consumer and business needs.” The Altitude Angel founder and chief executive, Richard Parker, 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.”