ISP Gigaclear Turns Slowest UK Street for Broadband into the Best
A bit of good news from rural “full fibre” provider Gigaclear, for a change. The ISP has announced that Greenmeadows Park (Bamfurlong, Cheltenham), which was last year named as the slowest street for broadband speeds in the United Kingdom, has now become one of the fastest after a 900Mbps+ capable FTTH network went live.
The “slowest” claim actually stemmed from uSwitch’s report at the end of 2018 (here), which was itself based on consumer speedtests rather than network availability and found that locals in the area generally received a pitifully poor average download speed of just 0.143Mbps (Megabits per second).
The good news is that the Gigaclear has been working to reach the area as part of their state aid supported deployment under Phase Two of the Fastershire programme. Following an 18-month build and more than 380km of ground dug, properties in Green Meadows Park can now connect to a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network if they so desire.
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Joe Frost from Gigaclear said:
“We believe passionately in the importance of digital inclusion for all, no matter how rural their chosen home or business is, and we are delighted that our network is bringing best in class broadband speeds to residents of Green Meadows Park in partnership with Fastershire. We hear time and 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.”
Gigaclear is currently working to extend their FTTP network to cover around 70,000 premises across both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire (16,000 of those have already been completed), although their roll-out has suffered from a few delays (here).
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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Hard to know what the scale is here – 380km seems a lot for a ‘street’ even if it is a static home park.
I believe that the 380km must refer to the whole build in that lot to date. The way press releases usually include announcements of things that have already been announced I would be tempted to think it is the total in the Fastershire areas altogether, but given they have covered a lot of the Cotswolds I expect that have done more than that in total so far.
In total Fastershire say that Gigaclear will lay 7000km, so 380km is 5% of the total. Still got a lot of digging to do…
It all depends on where they had to bring the fibre from I expect – thats going to make a big diff on those numbers.
Hurrah! That’s 34 or so park homes sorted out, just another 54,000 properties to go in the Fastershire areas.
I notice that there is finally some work happening in Fastershire lot 3c around Minsterworth and Westbury-on-Severn (according to roadworks.org). Perhaps they are getting their act together?
Only another 15 miles to get to my area now…
Gigaclear have lost yet another contractor on our commercial patch – that is at least the fourth contractor that has called it a day on the project in 3 years.
I suspect BDUK projects are sucking the contractors away from commercial projects now that the timelines are getting a bit close
Where about is that then? I know Gigaclear are struggling to resource both Fastershire and CDS BDUK projects (and possibly others). If they are moving contractors from commercial areas to BDUK projects it shows they are still desperately short of staff.
Tbh all are struggling to get staff. Its driving up costs to get them. Too some extent ORs move to connectorisation has helped a bit as it needs less skill to do work but its a bit of a sticking plaster. I can’t see how this will improve in the next 12-18 months.
This is in Essex west of the M11.
I did hear on the grapevine (well, Parish council actually) that Gigaclear will now be using Kier in the CDS rollout in our area and work starts again in May. Kier are the same contractor Devon CC highways use which I imagine has something to do with it. Still, at least they are delivering service with state aid *somewhere* in the country…
It is definitely behind schedule but it is definitely still happening least you guys know that once it’s done you will never be behind again in the same situation. Lot of suburban and semi rural areas haven’t got the same assurance as that.
Do Gigaclear use CG-NAT?
You don’t have to get your broadband from Gigaclear – they have a number of ISPs that use their network, and they offer different products (e.g. Gigaclear don’t offer IPv6, but others do).
Thanks, AnotherTim!
Gigaclear’s ISP does not use CGNAT, no. But as AnotherTim says, not the only operator on the network.
Still waiting for Gigaclear and Fastershire to pull their fingers our in the forest of Dean. Pathetic so far here!