Rural UK ISP Gigaclear Adopts AI to Improve Customer Broadband Installs
Abingdon-based broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has built their full fibre (FTTP) network to cover 600,000 premises (mostly in remote rural parts of England) and is home to 150,000 customers, has today announced that they’ve adopted Vyntelligence’s AI video technology – the first UK retail fibre provider to do so – to improve customer installation journeys by reducing unnecessary work.
Since launching the initiative, Gigaclear claims to have already seen “impressive results“. To date, over 1,100 customer submissions have prevented nearly 200 avoidable site visits, saving time, improving first-time installation success rates, and minimising disruption for customers in some of the UK’s hardest-to-reach areas.
The technology achieves this by enabling the provider’s customers to capture short guided videos of their homes and preferred installation routes using just their smartphones. Vyntelligence’s Agentic AI then analyses the footage, summarising key information and automatically assessing installation complexity. This allows Gigaclear’s engineers and contractors to prepare more effectively, cutting down unnecessary visits, reducing costs, and minimising delays/errors etc.
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The Agentic Video Intelligence Work Platform initially appears to have only been adopted across a limited part of Gigaclear’s network, but it’s now being rolled out right across the rest of their network.
Ben Woods, Chief Operating Officer at Gigaclear, said:
“As the UK’s largest rural-focused full fibre provider, we’re committed to removing barriers to connectivity. Partnering with Vyntelligence puts customers in control of their installation journey while helping our teams deliver a faster, more reliable service.
Being the first retail fibre company to adopt this technology underlines Gigaclear’s commitment to innovation and to bridging the digital divide in rural communities.”
We’ve seen similar tools to this before, although they’re usually adopted by engineers to help plan their installation through a particular building (e.g. Openreach use something similar, such as for MDUs). But the idea of putting this sort of technology in the hands of end-users and then automating it through AI is not something we’ve seen done like this before, and it will be interesting to see how many other providers now take a similar approach.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I don’t have much comment on the actual story – seems like typical “everything is AI now” stuff. I’d be skeptical of what value it really adds beyond just giving the photos/videos to the technician.
But I do find the claim of “As the UK’s largest rural-focused full fibre provider” amusing. They’re all obsessed with finding any possible distinction to differentiate from Openreach. In this case OR probably has a lot more rural FTTP than they do and that increases every day.
From what I’ve read, it allows customers to send video surveys before installation for proper planning. The AI part seems to be automatically flagging issues and creating workflows from the video data to save time for the customer connections team – assuming this is what they mean by Agentic AI? Either way, if it’s saving time and improving operational performance then clearly it is a useful tool.
If only I could let Openreach know where to run the new duct for the fibre prior to the Engineers inside vist, every day is a failure to arrive for the outside survey, if they choose the shortest route they’ll drill into the washing machine in the new extension built over the existing copper landline duct!
When a mate of mine moved into his house he ended up having to have the NT5 installed in his back bedroom due to there being no spare pairs on the pole in front of his house. Eventually I managed to extend it down to his lounge. When Openreach fibred up his street he was offered a free upgrade by BT so I told him to take it on condition that it was installed in his lounge, yeah that won’t be a problem says BT. Guy turns up, oh no it’s got to go in the back bedroom making every BS excuse under the sun why it couldn’t be done. He rang me I told him to reject the installation, he did & the guy did a survey & they were back within the hour installing it where he had asked for it in the first place although he did have to wait 24 hours for Openreach to switch the routing.
@Big Dave: Just wanting to make the install the easiest way possible for himself, no doubt! In the first install you described, something probably could have sorted there also. Not the best outcome to have a master socket in a bedroom. He was lucky you were able to extend the pair, and have the Master Socket where he originally wanted it.
Indeed, it would be even better if they openly sold or certified internal conduit with draw string and bend radius guides allow householders to install a route to a convenient socket from any outside wall.
The very helpful groundworks contractors employed by Gigaclear gave me a decent-sized roll of micro-duct for me to lay under my new paved driveway and into the house when they were otherwise causing chaos in our village with road closures during the initial trenching. Ended up with a perfect install when Gigaclear finally lit up the village 18months later. Nice outcome here, but as above would be even better if it were generally on sale.
There’s no substitute for employing experienced network engineers who can isolate faults. With my install they sent countless contractors… Who seemed to not fully understand what they were dealing with i.e. how gpon works.
But the resolution was at gigaclears cabinet. On a breakout cable. Took them months to figure that out.
Too often people use AI as a shortcut for not properly learning a solution to a problem
@jan I completely get where you’re coming from — there’s no replacing the knowledge of an experienced engineer when it comes to diagnosing issues at the cabinet or on the fibre. What Gigaclear seem to be doing here isn’t about AI “fixing” faults itself, but more about using AI to spot patterns (like missed installs, repeat visits, or common blockers) and then recommending when/where to send an engineer, backed up with video guidance.
In other words, the AI isn’t a substitute for understanding GPON — it’s more of a triage and support tool to stop wasted visits and get the right person on site sooner. If anything, it should actually help skilled engineers by cutting down on the noise and making sure they’re only sent where their expertise is needed most.
Would actually help if they bothered to light up fibre where they have dug up.
They have dug up a lot of villages around here and layed the fibre in but seems very disinterested in actually providing a service. I smell a rat.
One such village is Misterton, Somerset – wonder if they got any government grants for laying it in the ground?
Same happened here (South Devon) and the issues were wayleave standoffs, poor project integration between the various contractors (groundworks, cabinets, actives), quite a bit of rework (useless plastic POTs installed in roadways where there should have been ductile iron), complete meltdown of relations with the CDS funding body and late redesign of the backhaul. So pretty much everything which could go wrong did, but once finally lit the service has been great, and far better than Openreach locally.
Not sure what to think of that, I really would not want my house layout in some AI software, I can see the reason for doing it, to save money, but do people really trust AI that much? I would not.