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NPL has entered a commercial agreement with Hoptroff to broaden the delivery of NPLTime Access® and strengthen the UK’s timing infrastructure.
This partnership enables wider access to assured timing services that help businesses innovate and meet increasing operational and regulatory requirements.
NPLTime Access® will continue to supply UTC(NPL)-traceable timing to UK users, while Hoptroff’s managed network provides one of the global distribution paths through which organisations can benefit from assured timing for applications in financial services, digital media, gaming, and enterprise environments.
Hoptroff's distribution technology combines terrestrial and GNSS sources with predictive failover to deliver resilience and reliability, complementing NPL's authoritative national time scale.
NPL launched the NPLTime Access® service in October 2023 as a supplementary service to the NPLTime Certified® service. The commercial NPL Time services use the UK’s national time scale, UTC(NPL), as its time source. It is disseminated to the NPL service nodes via Precision Time Protocol (PTP) over dedicated fibre links.
Hoptroff first accessed NPL’s timing signals for R&D three years ago under an Innovate UK (IUK) initiative. This transition to a commercial agreement demonstrates NPL’s commitment to helping UK companies to innovate, enhance their services, and accelerate time-to-market for new products, while recognising Hoptroff’s ability to operationalise timing services globally.
Richard Hoptroff, Chief Time Officer at Hoptroff, said: “NPL's continued support has been instrumental in accelerating our development and strengthening the UK's timing ecosystem. Our customers rely on us for precise, resilient timing, and this agreement anchors our services to the UK's national time scale, giving companies a clear path to demonstrate compliance and operational assurance.”
Elena Parsons, Strategic Business Developer Manager at NPL, said: “We are delighted to partner with Hoptroff to provide UTC(NPL)-traceable timing signals to users across the UK with the NPLTime® service. This collaboration is a prime example of how NPL empowers UK companies to deliver assured, high-precision timing solutions to their customers.”
Find out more about our NPLTime Certified® and NPLTime Access® services
27 Jan 2026Providing all UK industry sectors access to a secure timing signal independent of GNSS.
An assured service with certification that provides end users in the finance sector with a timing capability that underpins traceable time-stamping, latency monitoring and synchronisation.