First West Berkshire Premises Live on Gigaclear’s 1Gbps FTTP Broadband

A local retailer and restaurant in Hungerford are two of the first premises in West Berkshire (England) to benefit from the roll-out of Gigaclear’s new 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which aims to cover around 12,000 homes and businesses by the end of 2017.

The contract, which is supported by the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK programme and the related Superfast Berkshire project, was officially signed in July 2015 and the deployment phase finally got under-way at the start of last month (here).

You can check here for the rollout schedule, although premises in East Garston, Kintbury and Lambourn should be the next to see some benefit in 2016. Overall Gigaclear has invested £16m into the project, which is being supported by contributions from Broadband Delivery UK, West Berkshire Council and the Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Matthew Hare, Chief Executive of Gigaclear, said:

“What’s most impressive is that this farm shop in rural West Berkshire already have great ideas as to how they can improve the service they offer their customers using brilliant broadband: click and collect from Cobbs is just the beginning.

The pure Fibre-to-the-Premises network that Gigaclear has been installing over the last few weeks will make this service available to the first homes and businesses here in West Berkshire before Christmas, a busy time for us all.

Property by property, the Gigaclear network will transform the lives of residents and competitiveness of businesses across the region for the better. And in the long term, the pure fibre Gigaclear network’s speed and capacity is future-proofed and will not need updating over time as broadband requirements grow.”

Dominic Boeck, West Berkshire Councillor, said:

“It is fantastic to see a real life example of where superfast broadband really makes a difference to both businesses and homeowners alike. Residents and business owners in surrounding communities will now be looking forward to benefiting from these superfast speeds as the roll out continues into the New Year.”

Once complete the new coverage will combine with West Berkshire’s existing BTOpenreach deployment and that in turn should ensure that more than 99% of West Berkshire is covered by a superfast broadband network. We also note that Call Flow Solutions are playing a part by deploying some slower FTTC services to 11 new street cabinets in Windsor and Maidenhead, which will expand superfast connectivity to 1,750 additional premises.