Gigaclear and FullFibre Ltd to Overbuild in Shipston-on-Stour

Rural focused UK ISP Gigaclear has announced that their 1Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network will be extended to cover the small town of Shipston-on-Stour (population of 5,000) in Warwickshire, which comes just two days after rival network operator FullFibre Limited made a similar announcement (here).

The operator notes that their planned build in Shipston-on-Stour will cover a total of 2,727 premises (homes and businesses) and require over 19,000 metres of trenching to lay the fibre. The work is expected to be completed by Spring 2023, but they won’t be the only player in town.

Gigaclear’s announcement follows just two days after a rival operator, FullFibre Limited, made an identical announcement for the same town. But unlike Gigaclear, they didn’t specify how many premises would benefit or how long the build would take to complete.

As if to add a bit more fun to this picture, we note that Openreach are currently busy deploying their own FTTP network across a large section of the town. We suspect that Gigaclear and FullFibre will probably be making use of that new infrastructure – at least some of it – to run their own fibre, via the regulated Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) product.

Nevertheless, even with PIA, the investment case from having three FTTP networks serve such a small town is likely to create some challenges.

Ben Woods, Central General Manager at Gigaclear, said:

“We are thrilled to be bringing our warp-speed broadband to Warwickshire and to its residents and businesses that truly need it.

Having high-speed internet is essential these days. Starting in Shipston-on-Stour, we can bring speeds up from as low as 17Mbps to 900Mbps. When downloading large files, like films and games, this can be the difference between waiting over an hour to just two minutes.

We’re excited to bring our network to more people, especially those that need it the most, allowing them to enjoy the life-changing benefits that come with world-leading connectivity.”

At present the operator’s network, which currently covers over 250,000 premises in predominantly rural communities, is already present in masses of villages and market towns across a large chunk of England, and their aim is to reach 500,000 premises by the end of 2023.

Customers can expect to pay from £17 a month (discounted rate) for a symmetric 200Mbps broadband package on an 18-month term (£40 thereafter) and that rises to £49 (£79 thereafter) for their top 830Mbps plan. All packages include a wireless router and free installation.