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Gigaclear progress in North Wiltshire

Hello, I live in a village in North Wiltshire. We currently get about 2.5 Mbps on ADSL, most of our village is too far from a cabinet to get FTTC. Wiltshire Council awarded phase 4 of its rural rollout to GigaClear who have promised FTTP to every home in our village. For many months we’ve seen roads being dug up and pots being installed but very little sign of anyone being connected. We had been told we could to be live by 4Q18, then 2Q19 but on chasing GigaClear this has been revised to 4Q19. I have little confidence in that date.

Frustratingly as part of phase 3 of the Council rollout BT made provision for some of the village to have FTTP available but not our place despite the fibre practically crossing the end of our drive. I believe, but could be wrong, that OR are hamstrung by the terms of the rollouts and so not be allowed to compete with the phase 4, GigaClear rollout.
I have been tempted by FTTPoD as I’d have thought with fibre now in the village the cost should be reasonable (for a given value of reasonable).

Ranting over, I’d be interested in other people’s experience with GigaClear in Wiltshire, has anyone gone live and how are they finding the service?
 
You're correct in that state aid cannot be used to overbuild other full fibre networks. However in fairness it's not uncommon for there to be a long wait between the point where you see engineers working and the point where the service itself goes live. It took over a year for my own FTTC cabinet from Openreach to go live, although experiences do vary between operators and areas.

Gigaclear has also become notorious for its rollout delays since last year, which affected most of their contracts. Mind you we haven't heard anything about the Wiltshire project but I suspect they were also hit.
 
Thanks Mark. I understand that there may be a delay between trenches being dug and service being available. The danger for GigaClear is that public perception of them suffers with each shift of date they announce. It doesn't help that their engineering works seem to randomly crop up around the area and the quality of their reinstatement of people's driveways and pavements has been patchy at best. I don't envy them the scale of the task to bring fibre to a lot of small areas but they did agree to take it on. I wonder if they have over-reached themselves with the work they've agreed.

I am very pleased that the option of FTTP is coming to our area but when your internet speeds haven't improved for ten years it is hard not to get frustrated. It didn't help that during the years that BT were given Wiltshire Online contracts their rollout plans were pretty opaque and so it was difficult to know whether to start a community scheme.
 
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I havent looked at the back story for recent GC delays, but I know in the last, several have been out of their control.
BTW intransigence, or issues with getting permission to lay cable across certain public/private property boundaries; the modern version of the ransom strip.
 
Did you get connected to Gigaclear? or are you still waiting.

I’m in north wilts as well area 20 “Leigh” they appear to have finished, well I can’t find any more roadworks for the area and the last lot were for blowing fibres. But trying to get updates from them is very difficult. There website information is static and despite registering my interest have never had an update.
 
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