Gigaclear Become First UK ISP to Drill FTTP Under River Severn

Rural full fibre provider Gigaclear has, as part of the state aid supported Fastershire project in Gloucestershire, become the first ISP to drill their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network so that its optical fibre cable can run under the River Severn to reach 861 homes in two villages (Longney and Framilode).

The work itself forms part of stage 3 of the Fastershire broadband project – a joint initiative between local authorities in both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (England) – with Gigaclear, which will give more than 70,000 premises in both counties access to a new ultrafast broadband network.

Crossing rivers can be very difficult, particularly if the usual approaches of running cables alongside a bridge or throwing it between two overhead points (e.g. poles or buildings) aren’t viable. In this case the operator worked with civil engineering firm Complete Utilities to drill some 5 metres below the River Severn (necessary to avoid disturbing the riverbed).

After that a horizontal directional drill, specifically a Vermeer drill with 133kn pullback force (this had to be imported especially for the project), was then used to complete the deployment to the other side. Overall some 6.5km of cable was laid from Elmore Back and through to Minsterworth.

All of this work has taken months of planning and is likely to have been quite costly, which is one of the reasons why the villages – surrounded as they are by the River Severn on the west side and a Canal on the east side – have tended to be avoided by other ISPs.

Nevertheless they can now access Gigabit speeds via the new full fibre network, which is a huge improvement from the previous speeds of between 1-3Mbps via Openreach’s (BT) old copper lines.

Peter Pentecost, Regional General Manager at Gigaclear, said:

“We are proud to be working alongside the Fastershire Broadband Project in bringing best in class broadband speeds to Longney and Framilode through our full fibre ultrafast network. The scale of this civil engineering task goes to show how passionately we believe in the importance of digital inclusion for all, no matter how rural their chosen home or business is.

We hear time and time again how an excellent internet connection can really transform lives, be it accessing important social and retail services remotely or simply keeping in touch with family members living far away.”

Councillor Patrick Molyneux said:

“This is a tremendous engineering operation and we’re delighted to see it achieved. The scale of this project illustrates how difficult it is to reach rural areas of our county and how committed Gloucestershire County Council through Fastershire is to providing access faster broadband.

Fastershire’s work with Gigaclear is transforming broadband access across the county and is making it one of the fastest areas in the country. Currently 106,000 properties can already access a superfast connection as a result of the Fastershire project. By the end of the rollout this will have risen to 142,000 homes and businesses with well over half of that number capable of gigabit speeds, helping to ensure that our rural communities can continue to thrive.”

Apparently the first homes and businesses in the villages of Longney and Framilode are due to be connected in the next few weeks, once the FTTP infrastructure is fully in place. With the remainder to be connected once outstanding access agreements (wayleaves) with local landowners are secured (it’s unclear why these weren’t sorted beforehand).

Admittedly we should point out that Gigaclear’s local deployment plan has suffered some delays – similar to what they’ve experienced in other parts of England – and as a result their completion for the currently planned work was recently pushed back to the end of 2021 (here); including a tiny number that may overrun into January 2022.