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Gigaclear begin fibre-to-the-home deployment in Hambleton
Thursday 22 September 2011 12:34:50 by John Hunt

Gigaclear network build in Hambleton, September 2011

Gigaclear have started their work on delivering fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) to the Rutland village of Hambleton after Rutland Telecom announced their Hambleton deployment plans back in December 2010. The project is financed through investors from Hambleton Village, with a long-term loan secured against the network. Work has been delayed as it was initally announced that roll-out would begin in Spring 2011, however work began on the 12th of September. A fast deployment is expected with the first customers expected to be connected in early October with the entire project complete by mid October. Gigaclear are building and managing the network whilst their subsidiary, Rutland Telecom, will act as service provider.

Customers receive a Gigabit-ready router which has a fibre Gigabit network interface, 4-Gigabit Ethernet ports and wireless support up-to 300Mbps, whilst supporting both IPv4 and IPv6. The initial product offerings will see only speeds of up to 50Mbps.

"This Hambleton build is the start of the Gigaclear plan for ultrafast connection in rural communities. Our focus is national, and targeted in areas where there is a high demand for secure, high quality connections.

Gigaclear in Hambleton clearly shows that it is possible to deliver FTTH in rural areas, and it can be delivered now."

Matthew Hare, (CEO) Gigaclear

[ Topic: Broadband | 20 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by Somerset 8 months ago
Almost an island! - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Hambleton,+Oakham,+Rutland&hl=en&sll=52.641605,-0.619698&sspn=0.121455,0.316887&vpsrc=0&t=h&z=14

What's the cost?

Posted by themanstan 8 months ago
£250k for a population of 140ish so ~45 properties, so ~5.5K per home. This is a real indicative cost for a deployment in a rural area of FTTH, admittedly economies of scale help larger ISPs, but no more than 25% of the cost.

£1000+vat minimum for new customers, subject to a survey £150.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4511-rutland-telecom-to-deploy-fibre-to-hambleton-village.html

Posted by themanstan 8 months ago
Actually, probaly more expensive as the previous news itme said 60% registration, lets be generous and say 80% registered in the end.
So 6-6.5k per home connected.

Posted by rizla 8 months ago
Its in an affluent area so having garbage broadband probably knocked a fair bit more than £6k off the value of each house. I wouldn't be surprised if FTTH added £15k+ to the value of these houses.

Posted by GMAN99 8 months ago
Ouch but its realistic hopefully others will see the price and then realise why BT isn't rolling out FTTH everywhere.

Posted by AndrueC 8 months ago
@rizla:I'm not convinced. In my experience it's hard to find anyone over the age of 30 that gives a monkey's about broadband speed. Everyone wants it and iPlayer is popular but the technical side is still just for geeks. FTTP is obviously a plus point but I bet the number of kitchen cabinets and size of the garden are of far more interest.

Posted by New_Londoner 8 months ago
Suggest you look at the pricing usage allowance per month before getting too excited. ISP Review quotes £50/month for a residential package with 50Mbps download, 5 Mbps upload and 25GB/month usage.

So a bit faster than my current home FTTC service on download, slower on upload, with a paltry usage allowance vs unlimited at nearly twice the price. Nice!

Posted by GMAN99 8 months ago
So expensive to put in, expensive to run and to boot you can't use it for much :)

Posted by damien001 8 months ago
hmm CD not post, guess it proves what all the reasonable people been saying all along that FTTP just does not make economic sense

Posted by damien001 8 months ago
though out the UK

Posted by rizla 8 months ago
AndrueC - yeah but NOT having the speed to even use BBC iplayer does impact people over 30, and that's pretty much what most of Rutland is like.

Local builders tell me decent BB availability makes about 10k difference to the cost of a house plot. Architects are increasingly speccing cat5e into new build houses as well.

It makes a difference.

Posted by GMAN99 8 months ago
damien001, it makes economic sense if there's a market and people will pay the market price.

But I don't think either of the above apply at the moment, the latter probably never.

There's not a huge interest in 50Mb+ broadband across the UK at the moment and most people only want to pay £10-£20 per month for their broadband with no installation costs.

And you obviously can't do FTTP for that

Posted by herdwick 8 months ago
My experience is that people have their £750,000 house built, move in, and then discover it's 10 miles from the exchange.

£10k difference wouldn't cover the cost of fixing it.

Posted by chrysalis 8 months ago
yeah it will easily add 10k+ to value of houses in that area, remembering also FTTH is rare in the uk. Britian it seems is now rural ahead of urban in next gen internet services. Personally I dont count cable as next gen as it is too limited for upload capability.

Posted by craigbrass 8 months ago
@GMAN99: People in rural areas pay a minimum of £25 and I have found an average of £28-£36 I have found. The KEY here is line rental of £10-£15 which you currently have to have for broadband. Change this to a package of £30 inclusive of a VoIP line, have the infrastructure builder act as the provider (save an ISP sucking out profit for doing nothing) and get the majority of a few villages (200-300 properties) sign up and you have a network that can pay itself back in <10 years with FTTP being a 100 year technology. Simples.

Posted by craigbrass 8 months ago
@rizla: If builders building estates would stop contacting BT and instead one of the companies who have deployed FTTP (Rutland / NextGenUs / Vtesse / etc) to put in ducting they provide making them the sole provider on the new estate, that estate would have a much better selling point especially remembering that new estates are on the outskirts of towns and cities often and suffering exchange distance speeds...

Posted by themanstan 8 months ago
I appreciate the sentiment on smaller ISP rollouts in rural areas, but the ROI is going to be more than 10 years.
Take the Hambleton FTTP project, ~45 homes of which ~38 are connected. Gives an annual return of £23k pa, the interest on the loan is going to be ~£10k pa. The math suggests that this is a 20-25 year pay off and that is with a £50 pm package per household.

Posted by craigbrass 8 months ago
Problem with this project is it should of included neighbouring villages to reduce cost of backhaul and the contractors being used are too expensive. Sort those two problems out like Vtesse / NextGenUs did and your sorted for a payback period like the one I said.

Posted by Somerset 8 months ago
craig - what's the cost of the contractors and what do cheaper ones charge?

Posted by craigbrass 8 months ago
BT, Virgin Media, etc use a select list of approved contractors that charge the earth for work because they generally pass this onto the customer anyway (price per meter for new installs).

Not sure who Rutland are using but were they not using Geo who will then contract out themselves? http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4511-rutland-telecom-to-deploy-fibre-to-hambleton-village.html

Local small contractors generally charge a lot less, especially if the service is being installed to them and their village. Wayleaves can often be granted FOC too...