Gigaclear Extend Rural FTTP Broadband to 300,000 UK Premises
Infracapital-backed broadband ISP Gigaclear has this afternoon claimed that their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which tends to target rural parts of England, has now covered 300,000 premises (up from 250,000 in December 2021).
The operator’s network is already present in rural communities and market towns across various parts of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Kent and Essex. Going forward, Gigaclear’s next target is to reach 500,000 UK premises by the end of 2023, and they’re well on their way to that.
The latest milestone in coverage was officially achieved last month, which would make for a build rate of around 10,000 premises passed per month (that’s up from the 7,000 or so we were seeing late last year). Gigaclear said they would be “announcing further network expansion and build activity to new communities in the coming months”.
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Gigaclear CEO, Gareth Williams, said:
“We’re building our ultrafast, full-fibre network in some of the most challenging areas of the country, at the heart of the Government’s levelling up agenda, and yet our build rate has accelerated significantly over the past year. This is undoubtedly because we have more experienced teams, a better understanding of existing rural infrastructure, we’ve regionalised and we’re always innovating. Having tackled a lot of unique engineering challenges like crossing rivers, motorways and rail lines, it is great to see that knowledge and experience paying dividends.
Indeed, our approach of tackling the most difficult areas in our network footprint first – making good use of Government subsidy to help achieve this – will continue to allow us to infill at great pace in less challenging build areas like the nearby market towns in the coming months and years ahead.”
Customers usually 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.
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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Inteeesringly they are using Adtran XGS PON as well as P2P. Presumably someone realised there insane cost per property were not sustainable.
The cost of PtP isn’t much different from XGSPON build-wise when using own ducts. Point Topic did a study on this a while back.
The vast majority of their build cost is civils work.
Using PIA changes the maths a bit.
More horrific numbers for those whose money is being burned on this build.
WOW.
That great for them, we had FTTP Fitted to the pole’s outside our home back in July 2018.
But nothing at all has been done.
Openreach broadband team told us that they will not support any Broadband connection through landline as it cannot support the phone and Broadband together.
But don’t worry you will be getting FTTP SOON, Oh but we will not as it was cancelled.
My phone service provider wouldn’t bother chasing up either as a customer asking for broadband to get no support whatsoever from a service provider was complete joke.
We kept a phone line in the hope that we would be getting broadband but as that spent most of the time not working due to damage on the lines we gave up and cancel that no one bothers no one cares we are rural area so hard look.
As we are one of two house’s even the funding would not pay to have this done.
I can’t quite see how connecting two ends of an existing fttp cable could cost so much.
And again what happened to the choice of service providers as far as I see the new thing from ofcom was that k.com and Openreach was awarded it and fixing you on companies like BT and not having the free choice of service provider?????
As usual “UK” meaning England only.
Not even England, just south and midlands
This quote from the CEO is not true, ‘our approach of tackling the most difficult areas in our network footprint first’.
I’ve been told by Fastershire that the reason we are 5-7 years late on the build to our area is that Gigaclear tried to exclude us from the build because we are so remote and expensive.
They’ve done all the cheap stuff first which although understandable is not what the subsidised rollout was about at all, ie reaching remote areas.
We’ll be finally getting coverage by the end of this year, 7 years after we were told “we’re on our way to you and building as fast as we can”.
Gigaclear are just starting the second part of their Fastershire Stroat area build – the whole area was originally due to be complete by the end of 2018, with the first part going live in January this year.
They have cancelled some Fastershire areas altogether.
The reason their coverage has grown quickly over the past year is that they are now concentrating on villages and towns (commercial builds) rather than the rural areas (BDUK contracts).
The “most difficult areas in our network footprint first” quote is disingenuous.
They’ve spent insane amounts per premises passed even with subsidy. I imagine they’re making more use of PIA in more difficult areas to try and bring sanity to their costs and have done some cheaper build to bring that average cost down and get somewhat closer to target.
Even after subsidy they were spending over twice what VM were, over 2.5 times what CityFibre were and over 4 times what Openreach were per property.
That’s ignoring all the issues they were having that increased the costs higher, that’s just what they budgeted.
That they’ve managed to raise the money they have and are continuing to build at all is impressive. They must be getting some pretty impressive take up and have really gotten the costs down.
Certainly were a bit optimistic initially.
“…That’s ignoring all the issues they were having that increased the costs higher…” and are still having!
Their biggest current issue in our Devon village is the amount of rework. Once installed and commissioned they have a great product, but they must have had dismal levels of oversight / QA on the original civils. The number of failed installs due to blocked / wrongly labelled / poorly jointed microducts is eyewatering and they way these are then handled, with multiple visits as the civils remediation team (who actually seem pretty competent but drive a SwindonSouth Devon round trip per callout) can blow fibre but don’t carry splicing kit and thus can’t finish the install, is barmy.
I was told that a big part of their original problems here, leading to the collapse of the CDS contract, was that they didn’t factor in the “Devon Bank” – the deeply sunken lanes between two near-vertical, overgrown banks. They assumed the same soft/hard dig proportions as the more benign Berkshire lanes, massively underbid and had a horrible shock when faced with all the logistics and road-closure problems of digging up far more tarmac than they had allowed for. This, coupled with a less-than-helpful Devon Highways team and some very bolshie landowners requiring many more code-powers spats than they expected, caused the subsequent meltdown.
I haven’t met anyone who’s signed up for their service who’s unhappy once it’s working, but it has been a long, hard road – literally and figuratively!
It’s being rolled out here in North Bucks. The contractors make and leave a mess, have no and/or don’t use any PPE, even when using the tarmac cutting machine, plus the resulting duct depth is less than a foot (300mm) at best.
They can’t even put out the required road signs correctly! There again, I’m told by other more affected, that few of the workers speak English in any way or form, so management must be an issue.
They had to divert around a Copper Beach tree (that has a TPO) but still I think went too close, even though they were told they could only use hand tools, not machines.
I’m not opting for it, as though the initial 6mo fee is reasonable, it doubles (and then some) after that, and frankly 38MBPS VDSL is doing just fine, so far.
(Other than the leaked RFI from the poorly balanced overhead lines, especially around 9 and 10 MHz.)
FTTP? Is that “Fiber To The Premises”, or Pole? If the latter, what links the pole to the customers property?
From the pavement marks, a very small % of locals have taken up the offer, so far.
“…I’m not opting for it, as though the initial 6mo fee is reasonable, it doubles (and then some) after that,…”
Don’t (physically) chop off your copper line so you have an escape route at the end of the Gigaclear fixed term – local experience is that Gigaclear customer retention will negotiate, especially near their quarter-ends and the people who stay firm usually get their renewal price down to at or close to their initial rate.