ISP Gigaclear Offers 100Mbps Broadband for GBP19 Per Month
Rural focused broadband ISP Gigaclear, which is working to build their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across remote parts of England, has launched a special offer that gives new customers an unlimited 100Mbps (symmetric) service for £19 per month for the first 18 months (£44 thereafter).
At present Gigaclear’s network already cover around 240,000 premises in England, and they’re aiming to reach 500,000 UK properties by the end of 2023. The operator’s standard plans are currently based around three tiers – 300Mbps, 400Mbps and 600Mbps. As such, the new 100Mbps package is somewhat of a unique Black Friday style exclusive and will only be available to take until 1st December 2021.
All of their packages continue to include a wireless router, as well as an 18-month minimum contract term, free installation and unlimited usage.
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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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Does anyone have experience of prices for renewing after the contract ends? Their published prices for out of contract seem very steep!
Not too surprising given how much they have to spend to cover each premises in their rural focused network build.
Yes, I’d be interested in this. We’re 7 months in to an 18 month contract with Gigaclear. I did see they now have a dedicated retentions team, so maybe they do offer existing customers alternatives to the steep out of contract pricing.
We are fortunate enough to have Openreach VDSL2 alternative and FTTP is being rolled out in the area. However, staying with Gigaclear is the easy choice and their symmetric speeds do appeal.
Yes I renewed at their discounted rate of £34 (300Gbs) for an additional 18 months
I’m a year into a cheap deal, interested to know if they will discount on renewal. Where we live isn’t really rural more ribbon development on the edge of town. Yes they have expensive rural build but they have also had a lot of government money from BDUK !!
Even with the BDUK money they were still spending triple what CityFibre have per premises passed.
Race to the bottom.
No wonder nobody makes money investing in broadband.
Surely most of the Gigaclear coverage is in areas without a superfast alternative and I assume as its FTTP they are excluded from any voucher or BDUK procurement initiatives. Gigaclear therefore should be in the ascendancy.
So does this show that Gigaclear are losing the argument?. Consumers are a fickle lot and are not necessary lured by the desire of “full fibre”, they don’t know the difference I know but they don’t want disruption to garden/decor and are possibly frightened by a long term increase in cost (even if that is the projectory for all of us).
This to me means many are simply happy to stay with ADSL until OR (or other) get to them.
Perhaps Gigaclear would be better off offering Wholesale access to the leading ISPs even including BT Consumer.
> Consumers are a fickle lot and are not necessary lured by the desire of “full fibre”
That’s absolutely right, but a £19/month offer will persuade a substantial number to try the service. After 18 months they’ll have to decide whether to stick with the service at higher price (which some will), or switch back to ADSL. ADSL is available from fewer and fewer providers these days, and in 18 months time the choice will be even less.
Gigaclear’s choice of 300/400/600 tiers seem bizarre to me: 300M is way more than most households need or want. If they offered 30/150/600 and priced the 30M tier at £19 they’d clean up. However, the commercial risk would be that lots of current users on 300M would switch down to 30M.
I can imagine lots of customers will go for this, it’s clearly cheaper and faster than VDSL2/FTTC. But, I think they need to rethink their approach to post contract pricing. More than double the price seems pretty silly, after 18 months.
If only Virgin could offer symmetric or better than 10mb upload eh!
They do offer higher than 10Mbps uploads…
VMO2 list price for 100Mbps down/10 Mbps up broadband only is coincidentally £44 per month with no introductory offer.
https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/gigabit
Is the £19pm offer only via affiliates? I can’t see it on Gigaclear’s website.
I have a suspicion that they keep announcing these special offers in an attempt to dilute the bad news that keeps coming out.
Of course, the offer is no use to those of us in those areas where the Gigaclear build is delayed…
I see that there is yet another limited time offer (4 & 5 Nov only?) of 200Mbps for £20pm.
I wish they would put as much effort into building their network as the do in updating their offers!
To me it is starting to look like a desperate bid to get more customers to make the company look as if it is worth buying.
‘Is the £19pm offer only via affiliates?’ Dopesn’t look like it. You can download the Gigaclear Wholesale pricelist from there website. It’ll tell you two things. First: the cheapest they sell connections to their wholesale partners is £23 + VAT, for a 50Mbps connection. They are undercutting their own wholesale partners in some weird race with themselves to the bottom. Second: First page of the Wholesale Price List says ‘Gigaclear Confidential: This file may not be shared with anyone externally to the Gigaclear authorised wholesale partner.’ Download a copy and go figure.
My assumption is that the discount is focused on areas with poor take up/recent roleout. We’ve just had a leaflet drop with £17 for 200Mbps with the URL gigaclear.com/blastoff