Another part of the UK is set to benefit from a full fibre service, this
time Gigaclear is rolling out a FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) Gigabit capable
network to some four hundred homes and business in the Appleton and Eaton area of Oxfordshire.
The basic service will cost £37 a month, and carry a connection fee of £100,
and a typical installation charge of £85. The £37 service will have 10 Mbps of
capacity reserved for each customer, with the ability to burst up to Gigabit
depending on the level of contention on the network. A 50 Mbps service with
burst to Gigabit will cost £112 a month, and as with the other services speeds
are symmetrical.
While we can foresee a lot of people saying why bother with fibre if you are
only going to get 10 Mbps, this low figure should represent the guaranteed
throughput, and represents how capacity in data centres has been sold for many
years, i.e. you buy a sustained speed, and consider anything above this as a
bonus. If you were to express most existing ADSL/ADSL2+ services in a similar
manner it would be 0.1 Mbps with the ability to burst to connection speed
depending on contention levels.
120 properties have committed to the new network, which means network
construction will start in July, with the first customers connected in
August.
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10Mbps symmetrical guaranteed for £37/month in a rural area to boot. Brilliant.
Leased lines in London offering the same upload and download speeds cost hundreds per month – an no bursting to 1000Mbps!
Roll on independent rural specialists installing alternative fibre networks showing BT how it should be done.
Not available in Northern Ireland, and no plans to get involved here, which I understand… No support network set up I guess.
I like this model of selling the bandwidth. i.e paying for a guaranteed speed. At least it’s honest selling. Some ISP’s would sell this as a 1Gbps service at half the price 🙂 (naming no names 🙂 ) for the sake of getting lots of subscribers & then struggle with contention/network infrastructure upgrades etc.
Absolutely brilliant! and once the fibre is in they are ready for whatever comes in the future. I just wish companies like gigaclear could have got BDUK funding and built proper networks instead of just wasting it on BT cabinets as many councils are going to do. I wish them every success. Innovation and enterprise. Kudos.
At £37pm it is expensive. Are they trying to sell to people who can already get FTTC or is this aimed at people with sub 2mbps connections.
as a resident we are lucky to get 1.5mb, neighbour managed to get 2.8 after trapping a BT engineer for 8 hours.
Believe me this is a massive deal for the village, and we all look forward to roasting our bt home hubs 🙂
This is a non-FTTC area, which would be fairly late in any roll-out. This parish has a population of <1000. Fairly well to do, lots of pretty cottages (£400+k) and the like, much like Hambleton. I expect a fairly similar outlay so £5-6k per property.
CD, BDUK would only fund ~100,000 homes at this costing... far short of the 5 million it's supposed to cover... Fairyland economics as usual...
I wonder how they manage a £100 installation fee, they must have a long term plan to regain the costs
I’m confused as to how any normal home user is going to do a self install of their fibre!
I guess as it’s a drop fibre if overhead. Is there a box on the pole they just plug into or does the fibre need to be spliced?
Installation from Gigaclear is £500 for up-to 50m fibre.
will post more news when I get it
Once in place no BDUK funds can be used for services. So it’s unlikely BT or any other ISP will upgrade, population being to low to be viable. So gigaclear have effective monopoly, like in Hambleton. No wholesale so they guarantee their return.
Over how long though themanstan? It must be ages.
I wonder just how many users will get this burst to 1Gps? It sounds great but if you can’t do it often and are paying £37pm for a 10Mbps connection well… that changes everything really
@themanstan are you saying that if there is a non-open commercial broadband service provider in an area then that area can’t get BDUK money to build an open-access (wholesale) network?
Can you back that up with documentation? Would this include wireless service providers if speed offered was 25Mbps+?
@GMAN99
The pricing is at least realistic rather than the dive to the bottom of the major ISPs.
I’d have no arguements paying £37 for a guaranteed 10Mbps with the potential to go to 1Gps and at least its upgradeable.
I’d much rather have a pay for what you get model.
Check BDUK site, if there is an existing supplier of SFBB, then BDUK funds cannot be used in that area.
BDUK can only be used for new roll-outs where there is no existing SFBB.
So A&E have accepted a monopoly for roll-out now vs maybe/never in quite a while.
BT nor any other BDUK supplier will be in the same position as they have to wholesale, which erodes ROI.
Oh yeah Phil the price is real totally agree, but with no real competition or wholesale (I’m assuming VM aren’t in that area and it has poor DSL speeds) they can charge what they like I guess.
@Timmay
If you consider that BDUK’s function is to “ensure no community is left without the POTENTIAL to access SFBB.”
A non-commercial (i assume you mean not for profit) provider in the area means that potential to access is already there.
“to ensure access to SFBB (through whatever medium) is extended to as great a proportion of communities in the UK as possible”. self explanatory really.
There’s more detail on the proposal on http://www.appletonbroadband.co.uk
it depends whether gigacear if doins this as a commercial venture or have gain public money — if public money used then the manstan in correct
Hmmm… a bit of factual inaccuracy on the site jy1967.
http://www.appletonbroadband.co.uk/wp_super_faq/surely-one-day-bt-will-enable-fast-broadband-to-the-community/
Claims FTTC provides “…close to the cabinet will see download speeds of up to 11Mbps,…”
Still a good solution for a community that wants SFBB now.
http://www.appletonbroadband.co.uk/wp_super_faq/why-cant-we-get-virgin-to-provide-broadband/
Brought a smile to my face though!
Time to remind posters to refrain from profanities and attacks aimed at other posters
@andrew was it one of mine?