Gigaclear Start New Oxfordshire UK Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout

Abingdon-based rural ISP Gigaclear has today announced that they’ve kicked off the construction phase of their £25.4m (state aid) Project Gigabit contracts for South Oxfordshire (Lot 13.01 – c.5,500 premises) and North Oxfordshire (Lot 13.02 – c.4,200 premises), which will extend their full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to around 9,500 premises in hard-to-reach areas.

The contracts were first awarded back in November 2023 (here) and at that point it was stated by the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency that the “first premises under these contracts are anticipated to have access to gigabit-capable broadband in 2024“. But Gigaclear has clearly taken a bit longer than that to enter the build phase, and it’s currently unclear when the first homes will go live.

Both contracts will see the installation of over 250km of new cable ducts, and 50% of the project will be delivered using existing infrastructure (e.g. running new fibre existing cable ducts and poles). The Oxfordshire build is now underway and is expected to be completed by November 2026. Gigaclear has previously indicated that this deployment will complement their existing (commercial) £84m investment across the whole of Oxfordshire.

Customers of the new service, once live, can expect to pay from £19 per month for symmetric speeds of 300Mbps on an 18-month minimum term (£46 thereafter), which rises to £34 per month for their top 900Mbps tier (£82 thereafter).

Gigaclear’s CEO, Nathan Rundle, said:

“Here at Gigaclear we’ve made it our mission to bring full fibre ultrafast broadband to Britain’s rural communities, and this is exactly what Project Gigabit has been set up to achieve.

We have already made a significant investment in building our network in Oxfordshire and as a local business based in Abingdon, it is really important to us that we continue to improve digital inclusion in the county, and to bring our home-grown full fibre broadband to local residents.”

Telecoms Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, said:

“There is so much our modern digital world has to offer – from online healthcare to keeping in touch with friends and family – but a lack of fast and reliable broadband has excluded some communities in Oxfordshire from so many of these benefits.

It is great to see that, as part of this Government’s Plan for Change, we are helping to plug some of the digital gaps in North and South Oxfordshire and getting one step closer to realising our ambition to achieve full gigabit coverage by 2030.”

Gigaclear is principally owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company previously had investment commitments estimated to be worth up to around £1.1bn (here) and, at the end of 2023, also secured a £1.5bn debt facility (here).

The operator previously held an ambition to cover “over” 1 million UK premises by 2027, but it’s unclear how much this was impacted after last year’s job cuts (here). This came as part of “planning for the next stage of its development” and a “re-focus on ultra-rural areas“.

The operator is reportedly now on the hunt to find new funding in order to help continue their full fibre network deployments across the UK (here).