Gigaclear’s £38m Rural Buckinghamshire FTTP Build Sees Competition
Rural UK broadband ISP Gigaclear has announced that their ongoing £38m investment to expand their UK Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network into Buckinghamshire (England), which has already covered around 19,000 premises, is being extended to reach 1,700 homes in the village of Great Missenden. But they’re not alone.
The first deployment work in Great Missenden is due to get underway in February 2023, and it will then join several other locations in the county where Gigaclear has already built, or are building, including Aston Clinton, Naphill, Chesham Bois, Great Missenden, Haddenham and Buckingham. A number of other locations in the region are also being planned for the future.
However, the move is interesting, since a number of other alternative and gigabit-capable broadband networks, such as via Swish Fibre and Trooli, are also deploying across the same area. Not to mention Openreach’s FTTP build and the fact that F&W Networks is nearby doing the same.
For one village, that’s a lot of competitive fibre build, which may stretch the economic viability models for all concerned. On the other hand, Great Missenden is home to a local population of over 10,000 and a key rail link passes through the community, thus it’s not as small as some locations. Nevertheless, there are now so many AltNets in the market that we’re seeing more and more overbuild cases in similar areas.
Ben Woods, Gigaclear Central Delivery Director, said (Bucks Free Press):
“Whilst many other broadband providers compete to offer their services in dense, urban areas we’re focussing on communities in Buckinghamshire that are far less likely to have a choice of supplier.”
Residential customers of the service can currently expect to pay from £17 a month (£40 after 18-months) for a symmetric 200Mbps broadband package on an 18-month term and this rises to £49 (£79 after 18-months) 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 and Linkedin.
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Not really on topic with Gigaclear, but yeah overbuild is actually taking off in many areas. Even in London. My street in 2022 went from FTTC only (no VM) to OR+CommunityFibre+Hyperoptic FTTP, now that poor pole outside my door has quite some weight added…
£38million for 19000 properties? The £2000 per property is a lot.
That’s 19,000 premises covered so far, not including the 1,700 for the new village and the locations they’re planning thereafter – all within the same bucket of investment.
Fair enough, they are going to need a lot more properties from that pot though!
They just need to come to Aylesbury as there is no competition re FTTP!
comicbook you clearly missed this announcement in november 2022 reported by Buck Herald
Over 50,000 Aylesbury homes have been selected for an ultrafast broadband rollout which will see £15.9 million spent on improving internet speed in the region.
Broadband operator, Netomnia, has announced this morning (8 November), that its full fibre multi-gigabit network is coming to Aylesbury.
And High Wycombe also. I can only have VM with decent speed and latency, however this is on coax cable. Currently I’m on 1gbps from VM, all fine but upload speed is a joke. Would love to have symmetric or at least half of download speed. I transfer about 3Tb a month and really need FTTP.
Swish Fibre built Great Missenden and Prestwood last year and have been taking orders and installing customers for months. Trooli have also deployed their network there. There is even some Openreach fibre in the area. Great choice for residents.
It may be a great choice for residents, but bad nes for investors or shareholders to waste so money of deploying another fibre network with only a low takeup to be expected.
See
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?tab=2&election=1#13/51.6722/-0.7062/trooli/swishfibre/
The benefits of HS2 passing by? Not to mention a certain residence between GM and Aylesbury. With the number of altnets and OR overproviding, there will have to be some sort of rationalisation to keep shareholder values up. In a sense, I find it odd that there is so much choice of ‘last mile’ provision, unlike electricity/gas which use the same wires/pipes no matter who you buy from. Still it is a well-heeled area I suppose.
Gigaclear did a dry install on our property last April. (April 2022); still waiting to be connected. Contacted support and all very nice but they never call back as promised. Fastershire have stated that Gigaclear get paid the GOV contract for getting you ready for connection not actually connecting you. In our area they are only interested in connecting towns and villages which already have fast broadband.
@Fastman I can’t get any maps to see where they are deploying. But putting my full postcode says they are not deploying near me. 🙁 can’t believe all the smaller towns around Aylesbury have a choice of different FTTP providers but alas none for me. They could have just laid the cable with the HS2 crap at the same time,as they are digging up the road enough!
Having signed up to Gigaclear over two years ago (in a village already connected)…..it would be quite nice if Gigaclear actually connected me instead of expanding their area!