Gigaclear Reviews

Gigaclear have been pretty good so far. They were quick to get the installation done; the engineers who came round probably didn't dig down far enough for the cable but it's OK for us - just a narrow trench in the lawn. Speeds have remained good - 200 to 330 Mbps as a rule. We've had around three outages that I know of but they haven't lasted more than an hour or two and we can survive on mobile data while the fault is being sorted out. I don't like their pricing policy of heavy discounting for the contract length and then a huge hike thereafter. Will try to negotiate a more reasonable price when our contract is at its end - this April. Router works fine and more Linksys nodes are available on eBay at around £30 to £35: they're easy to set up provided you use the Linksys app and not a web browser interface. Wireless speed is excellent: around 200 Mbps between nodes. My old laptop can't keep up on WiFi so I use Ethernet via a mini switch, as it never leaves the office.

My experience relates to installation and has highlighted repeated failures by senior management to provide even a basic level of customer service.

• Failure in communications, both internal and external.
• Systemic failures in business processes
• Lack of accountability
• Failure to manage subcontractor teams effectively.
• Failure by senior managers to respond or prioritise clear breaches in agreed customer installation dates.
• Lack of representation of senior managers during office hours
• Failure to deliver on behalf of commitments and grants made by the UK Government to rollout faster broadband across the country.

I suggest that anyone who has had similar experience lodge a formal complaint with OFCOM, write to their local MP in regard to UK Governments commitment to roll out of faster broadband and fibre and continue to post their own poor experiences on social media, so that other potential customers can avoid wasting time and effort with this company.

How could a company compete for prime installation in my area, and then run the show like a cowboy outfit. I was told several weeks ago my service would go live, but they sent an engineer 2.5 hours away from me to carry out the install only to be told they needed specific permission from the property owner to make a few little holes to route the cable into my flat? Now several weeks on, I am still in limbo with some guy calling me from a mobile phone seeming to understand perhaps a little bit more than the call centre but even he has gone cold turkey on me! I am not impressed and a lot of hype, major roadworks impacting locals and for what???

I went for the 500 Mbps connection with two Linksys-WHW0301GC-UK-Velop_UG_LaunchEdition units. I am very disappointed with the Linksys units as they are a really dumb mesh system.

I cannot back up the config, so if anything ever went wrong, I would have to set it up from scratch. My TP-Link router and even my Sky router can be backed up. I Am looking at trying to use my TP-link router to replace the Velop units as I have quite a complex setup with 30-40 devices, fixed IP, port forwarding that takes ages to set up if it ever had to be done from scratch.

The speed is very good, anything connected by ethernet sees the speed at the router, 506 up and 540 down, so pleased with that. Wi-Fi somewhat slower, at 200+ Mbps.

Horrible company to deal with. We ordered 900Mbps, 99% of the time it is considerably less, between 300-500. Apparently ringing up and saying its slow isn't good enough, we tested initially using the Linksys app and Linksys router they supply but apparently this router they supplied can't be relied upon to generate accurate results, so we have to find a device with an ethernet port run the speed tests and report back to them. For this I used my corporate grade high spec Thinkpad that I use myself for bandwidth tests (I coincidentally install fibre myself for cctv and access control systems) and supplied the requested tests and hey presto they contact us yet again saying it must be something on the laptop making it run slow. Needless to say we would not recommend them. We are stuck with them now, but the customer service is horrible and we hope once our speed issues are resolved we never ever have to contact them again.

Our connection was generally good until a digger from an adjacent building site went through the cable. Despite having a three working day SLA to fix it, it's now a week later and nothing. Every single phone call is met with ,"someone will have to call you back" and, unsurprisingly, no call is ever forthcoming. The last email I sent two days ago has not been answered. Customer care is frankly, lamentable.

As I work from home, and in an area with no phone reception, this is deeply damaging. If you're happy with having no connection for a week and more and a customer service team who frankly couldn't care less, I guess they'd be a good choice.

I'm now seeking compensation.

Have been on Gigaclear FTTP fibre for over two years. Two fibre lines for resilience. Four networked computers, two smart phones, two smart TVs, home automation, Sonus, Webcam, Skype, Vonage telephone line.

Quality - Outstanding
Reliability - exceptional
Speed - breathtaking and asymmetric
Cost - Outstanding value for the speed-900+Mbs

A company to be admired for delivering what it promises. It puts BT to shame.

Positives

The cabled speeds are as advertised.

Therefore good for business users and new build homes with in built wiring.

Uploads speeds light years ahead of BT's 0.3gb.

We would never have got Fibre as we live in a small village in Oxfordshire and BT were the only provider so we had to pay retail rates as there are no special offers as no competition.

Negatives

The initial installation costs will be nearer £200 than the £100 unless you live right next to the main road. Unfortunately they wont estimate until the day they can install as its done by a 3rd party.

If you want a landline it is £7/month with Vonage. This is not mentioned or included in any of their cost comparisons.

Your house needs to be hardwired to access the speeds. Not realistic for the modern home with multiple Phones, tablets and laptop computers.

The wifi part of their box is very poor. Signal drops to 20% i.e. 20gb within 2 feet and 10gb 6 feet away. Therefore if you are not in the same room as the router you wont get reasonable speeds. It also doesnt like multiple users anymore than 2 users you can forget it. If a film or netflix is involved then only one user. My 6gb copper wire BT service was better for multiple users

Customer Services do not respond well to complaints and wont answer performance issues. Quotes from Gigaclear "Contractually our responsability for your connectivity ends at the router" another "many homes require additional networking equipment".

Wifi issues are given to third parties to resolve who will recommend hard wiring and multiple wifi routers. For my 4 bed open plan house to get near the rates Im paying for would have been 3 cables and 3 routers which is approx £530.

I live in Oxfordshire and im aware of 400 houses plus having to have £60 dual band routers installed by 3rd parties to boost signals to reasonable levels.i.e 30-50gb 20 feet away.

None of the above is in their literature or mentioned in their community meetings for new villages.

If a £40 router from Currys is all it needs, This is surely would cost less than £20 to be installed in Gigaclears router. Why havent they done this as the minimum package is over £450 pa.

They obviously have switching, server and capacity issues as my Speedtests are connecting to Uno in MK, Vodafone in Newbury, and Lausa in Gloucester instead of XILO in Slogh/Maidenhead!?

I've been on the Gigaclear service 5 or so months now.

Install: Completed it myself, within the hour. Ran it from the box at the end of my drive no problem. Wasn't helped a week later with it being dug up for no reason, and tarmacced over!!!!! I contacted Gigaclear who apologised and held their hands up about it being their fault and not sub-contractors - refreshing honesty I applaud them for.

Technically: Good service, can't fault it. The bottleneck seems to be other websites / hosts connection not mine, hence I only get my 200Mbit/s package occasionally through no fault of Gigaclear - I must say, I go get the full 200Mbit/s unlike the 'up to' speeds. I also use a SIP adapter and Sipgate for a phone - no phone bills there, I only use it as an emergency measure. I put £10 on when I signed up, and I've still over £9 balance, so saving me money there I guess. As for the router, use it as your 'gateway' and get yourself a wireless AP I suggest. It's pretty basic only offering 802.11a/b/g/n (I use ac everywhere!) so worth forking out another £70 if you need that coverage / speed around the home.

Support: OK, nothing more. Still a small company, so some sticky patches still. They sent me 2x routers (starter / self install kits) and aren't bothered about picking the second one up (still in my study!) even though I offered and their Head Office is less than a mile away! With the issue above too, this is one of their points which I can see improving drastically (hopefully) as they grow.

Value: Here's the worst point - it's not as cheap as BT or Sky, as they advertise so do your research before committing. True it's FTTH not FTTC and it's synchronous service (200Mbit up and down) but even so, you can get BT deals which will be same service as the GC starter package, cheaper. The connection fee of £100 is pretty steep, but understandable for getting off the ground capital wise I guess.

Reliability: As the network grows, more users will be connected to their access points (equivalent of the BT cabinet, but for their fibre network). Each batch that goes on, they schedule an early AM (4-6:30am) outage to carry out this maintenance. This has however never caused me an issue, and the service always comes back up without issues, so good news there.

Overall, I've got around 9-12 months to decide whether to move back or not to FTTC (I question whether I fully utilise FTTH, even though I work from home 2 days a week). It's expensive for what it is, I just suggest really analysing your use before signing up.

Hi,

Just been connected a few weeks ago, so can't really provide a long term review yet (I will post a follow up in 6 months) but so far so good!

The main attraction of Gigaclear is obviously the speed of the connection, which other provider gives you a symmetrical 1Gbps link for £69/month? (Speedtest here: http://www.speedtest.net/result/3109387129.png)

In real life, you virtually never reach the 1Gbps (impossible if you are on WiFi), and even wired the remote server is usually the bottleneck. But I'm happily downloading > 400Mbps.

Working from home upload speed as always been a major issue for me (on BT ADSL Pro I was limited to 512Kbps, so roughly 10 times dialup speed). Now I feel light years away! sending very large files in seconds instead of hours...

On an ethical point of view it also feel great to support an innovative company and not a communication giant that is overcharging the taxpayer for subsidised FTTC :-)

If you are lucky enough to be in a covered area, it's a really easy decision.... if not it might be time to move!