Gigaclear Shows Altnets Can Bring Fibre Optic Broadband to UK Schools

Alternative network provider Gigaclear has today demonstrated how they too can take on the big operators by using their new 1000Mbps (Megabits per second) capable fibre optic broadband (FTTP) network in the rural market town of Uppingham (Rutland, England) to connect a big local School.

Up until 2012 Uppingham was being served by a Sub-Loop Unbundled (SLU) broadband service and a free wireless internet (Wi-Fi) hotspot that covered the town centre, which was originally installed by Rutland Telecom (Gigaclear’s sibling). But this was upgraded in 2013 after Gigaclear completed the roll-out of their ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.

The ISP has now delivered this service to around 800 pupils that attend the local Uppingham School, which resulted in a huge demand for bandwidth (apparently video-learning and other related Internet learning resources have become the norm in classrooms). In fact just recently the school managed to gobble a full Terabyte of data in just one day.

Furthermore it’s understood that the partnership between Gigaclear and Uppingham School also played a part in helping to bring their fibre optic connectivity to the surrounding community, not least through the school providing the ISP with access to their existing ducts and facilities.

Adam Niblett, Director of Information Systems at Uppingham School said:

“With the growing prevalence of internet and video-based learning resources in classrooms, we needed a cost effective solution to dramatically increase bandwidth. I liked the personal service from Gigaclear, dealing with the people directly in charge of the project. We’re happy to have worked with Gigaclear to help provide connectivity to the broader Uppingham community.”

Matthew Hare, CEO of Gigaclear, added:

“We’ve truly seen the digital revolution change the way classrooms operate and how children interact with online learning. More and more schools are seeing the benefits of these rich, interactive forms of Internet and media based learning, and are seeing ultrafast broadband services like Gigaclear’s as a way to cost effectively deliver these benefits. We’re proud to work and partner with schools like Uppingham, helping them to educate Generation Z and working together to connect more people in their community to ultrafast commerce, entertainment and communication.”

Gigaclear, which typically focuses on connecting rural communities that have often been left neglected by BT, recently raised another £6.5m of investment (here) and eventually hopes to push their FTTP service out to reach a total of 200,000 premises. But the immediate aspiration is to hit 50,000 premises by the end of 2015.