Rural ISP Gigaclear Hails Free FTTP Connected Community Hubs

Infracapital owned broadband ISP Gigaclear, which has already built their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 130,000 UK premises, has today officially launched their new Community Hub Scheme that will offer a “free” 900Mbps business service on a 12 month term to key community sites in the areas they cover.

The idea of offering a free service to key community sites (e.g. the village hall, a local pub or school etc.), often as part of the local network deployment, is something that we’ve seen from a number of operators (e.g. B4RN) and Gigaclear are no exception. As it stands 137 the provider’s Community Hubs are already connected to their network and they want to see this number increase.

Often the community site, which naturally benefits from having a fast broadband line to support events and service demonstrations, will then go on to deploy its own public WiFi hotspot for local residents and visitors. The latest such community hub to benefit is Chadlington Memorial Hall in Oxfordshire.

One small catch to this is that the chosen hub must agree to allow Gigaclear to hire the space a maximum of four times a year, free of charge, for community events such as cinema nights, digital skills workshops etc.

Gareth Williams, CEO of Gigaclear, said:

“We are passionate about digital inclusion, our mission is to connect the most underserved communities that are so often underserviced by the industry’s biggest players when it comes to broadband so that no one is left behind. As part of that commitment, we’ve launched a Community Hub Scheme to provide critical community services with free, 12-month, 900Mbps internet connections.

We know how transformative it can be to connect community hotspots to ultrafast full-fibre broadband, whether it’s the village hall, local pub, school, community centre, shop, library or sports centre. Our scheme is intent on enabling communities to do more and enjoy the benefits that come with world-leading connectivity, whether that be helping schools to stay open, enabling pubs to operate safely with online ordering, or something else; the possibilities are endless.”

Representatives for locations that have been reached, or are planned to be reached, by the provider can submit an application for the free connection, although this offer only covers the first 12 months of service. After that Gigaclear appear to say that they’ll consider applications for an extension to the free period, but if declined the “service would either be disconnected or you could buy one of our service packages.”

We should clarify that this promotion reflects one free connection “per build area,” although their build areas sometimes cover more than one community or parish. Otherwise, the provider currently aims to cover 500,000 UK properties with their FTTP network by the end of 2023 (here).