ISP Gigaclear to Extend FTTP Broadband Cover in Surrey UK

Rural-focused UK ISP Gigaclear has announced that they’re planning to extend their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across a further 7,000 premises (homes and businesses) in Surrey, England. The first location to benefit from this expansion will be the large village of Chilworth.

The announcement itself suggests that the deployment into Chilworth, which is being supported by a new contract with civil engineer firm Clancy, will “mark the start of plans by Gigaclear to extend its network across rural communities in Surrey.” But this appears to overlook the fact that they’ve already covered a significant amount of Bagshot, a modest sized town, in the same county (here).

Chilworth itself is currently home to a local population of around 2,000, and it’s a fair old distance away from the edges of their existing network. The first engineer work in the village is currently scheduled to start in March 2023, although the operator hasn’t yet confirmed what other locations in the county may be reached (their website doesn’t yet have a related project page).

Where possible, Gigaclear will also be utilising existing Openreach cable ducts and poles (PIA) to run their own fibre in order to minimise disruption during the build phase.

Jonathan Divito, Gigaclear Senior Project Manager, said:

“Taking our full fibre network into rural Surrey demonstrates our commitment to extend our network to new communities. Whilst many other broadband providers compete to offer their services in dense, urban areas we’re focussing on communities 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.

As a side note, Gigaclear appears to be holding to a build rate of around 10,000 premises per month (our estimate). At this rate they should achieve their target of 500,000 premises by the end of this year, as planned.