Gigaclear Sign £3.1m Deal to Extend FTTP Broadband in Essex UK

The Essex County Council (ECC) has awarded a second £3.1 million contract in their Phase 4a Superfast Essex programme to Gigaclear, which will see the ISP extend their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network to cover an extra 2,100 rural homes and businesses in the Epping Forest District.

Currently around 93% of premises in Essex can already access a “superfast fibre broadband” (30Mbps+) network – mostly via FTTC (VDSL2) and a bit of FTTP – which includes 106,000 premises that have benefited as a direct result of the state aid supported Superfast Essex project (expected to reach 149,400 by March 2020 – excluding Phase 4’s latest planned additions (overall total of 154,600 inc. Phase 4a)).

Overall it’s predicted that local coverage of superfast broadband will reach around 97% by December 2019 and ECC has made no secret of their desire to get as close to 100% as possible by 2021, which is where the new Phase 4 contracts come in.

The first contract under Phase 4a has already been assigned to Openreach (BT), which will roll-out their “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network to cover an additional 1,500 premises in the borough of Basildon and 1,600 in the district of Braintree (details here).

Meanwhile Gigaclear claims to have recently completed the earlier Phase 2b (funded by £5.5m from Gigaclear and £2m of public money) “Rural Challenge Project“, which supported a roll-out of their 1Gbps capable “full fibre” network to cover 4,545 premises in the Epping Forest area of Essex. As a result the new Phase 4a (stream two) contract represents an extension of that deployment and is due to completed by December 2019.

Lesley Wagland, ECC Chairman of the Superfast Essex Steering Board, said:

“We introduced the pilot Rural Challenge Project to find new ways of reaching rural communities with faster connectivity, and Gigaclear’s ultrafast full fibre network has done just that. We are really pleased to have a new commitment from Gigaclear to expand their network further as well as the continued support from Epping Forest District Council to help make this happen.”

Mike Surrey, CEO of Gigaclear, said:

“We look forward to continuing to work closely with the Superfast Essex team and with Essex Highways to deliver full fibre, ultrafast broadband to more than 30,000 properties including our commercial rollouts in the area. On completion of the current projects Gigaclear will have invested over £35M in Essex, and we will continue to innovate with our delivery methods to minimise disruption and to increase build efficiency.”

As usual the latest roll-out plans for both Phase 4a work streams are already available to view at address-level on the Superfast Essex interactive rollout map. All properties due for an upgrade under the existing programme or as part of this additional coverage will have a green dot.

The additional work is being made possible thanks to an investment of £350,000 by Epping Forest District Council, which has been match-funded by a grant from the UK Government, together with existing project savings and a significant contribution from Gigaclear of over £2 million.

More public funding is potentially available in Essex, which suggests that we’ll see further contracts and network extensions being agreed in the near future.