Half Way There!

Prior to commitment of over a £1M investment Gigaclear are seeking to obtain commitment from ~40% of our residents.
Currently they have signed up half of the required number of residents in order to start digging in the Fibre Cable.

Gigaclear Field Sale team spotted in Horninghold

The Gigaclear field sale team are now in the area to meet with residents and complete FTTP sales.
One of the team was in Horninghold last Friday.
We understand that they will be here until approx. end of February.

Gigaclear roll out in Lyddington, Rutland

For some years the village of Lyddington has been using a FTTC system installed by Rutland Telecom.  Rutland Telecom were taken over by Gigaclear some years ago and the operation has now been closed down.
Gigaclear are upgrading the village to a full 'Fibre to the Property' system as a part of the Welland Valley Fibre Loop.
Gigaclear are installing two main Fibre loops from Uppingham where the connection is located for the wider broadband network.
The Eastern loop goes to the villages around Peterborough.  The Western loop is going via Lyddington then on through Stoke Dry to Stockerston and the other Leicestershire Welland Valley villages.

Gigaclear experience from a user in Oxfordshire

One of our Welland Valley Champions from Glooston met a couple recently who are Gigaclear users.
They said they were happy to pass on their experience with Gigaclear:

Hi John

My name is Lucy McCormick (Chris McCormick's step mother) you met us at your local pub on Christmas Eve and you asked us to e-mail you with our experience of Gigaclear so here it is!

We have been nothing but delighted with the service we have received from Gigaclear - they have kept us informed with every step right from the moment we signed up for it a few months ago.  The set up was very smooth with regular text messages at each stage.
The phone for customer enquiries was a local number and we received personalised attention every time with no need to be put on hold or wait for hours to be dealt with.

Now that we have Gigaclear in place I have no idea how we managed before without it - the internet is just so fast!  I haven't seen the buffering sign on our smart TV or iMac since we have had it.  We can watch programmes live on iPlayer now, videos on YouTube and with 5 of us in the house - all using the internet one way or another this was always a major problem for us before Gigaclear.  Especially as we live in a village and the internet was slow at the best of times.

The whole experience has been a real pleasure from beginning to end and I can't see any reason why it shouldn't continue to be.

I wish you luck with your quest to improve everyone's life in your village with a fast efficient internet.  You're doing a great job.  Let me know if there's anything else I can do.

Happy New Year. It was very nice meeting you.


Kind regards,

Lucy McCormick

Gigaclear External Installation Kit

Gigaclear deliver the Fibre Optic cable to the kerbside of the property.

Connection can be undertaken by a DIY process, local 'handyman' or by the Gigaclear contractor Boxcom [www.boxcom.co.uk/gigaclear].

The following photos show examples of the installation process:

Connection to the property is via the kerbside 'Property Access Point'.

  





    Example 'Property Access Point'




A two fibre cable links the 'Property Access Point' to the property and Gigaclear Wireless Router:







    Link Fibre Optic Cable




A narrow trench is dug where necessary across tarmac as in the following example:

TV Usage in UK Declining with rise of Video Streaming

The number of households that own a television set has declined for the first time as the TV screen falls victim to other devices that can be used to watch videos. 

Ofcom report that there were 26 million television households, a 500,000 fall since the start of last year, as viewers turned to tablet computers, games consoles, laptops and smartphones. There are a million households in Britain that rely on broadband for their entertainment needs and have no sets.

Ofcom’s figures for catch-up viewing showed that 47 per cent of requests to watch shows on BBC iPlayer came from tablet computers or smartphones in July this year , compared with 25 per cent in 2012. 

Ofcom said that consumers, on average, were downloading 53GB of data a month — the equivalent of 35 feature films — over broadband networks, 77 per cent higher than last year. About 7GB of data is being uploaded for each household, the equivalent of 3,500 photos. There has also been a boom in mobile data usage, which has grown by 46 per cent to 1.5GB a year as people make use of fast 4G networks to watch videos and to upload photos via a smartphone. 

The average download speed for the UK’s broadband networks is 23Mbps, but Ofcom said that 3 per cent of households could not receive the government’s minimum basic requirement of 2Mbps, which was an election pledge. The regulator said that a standard broadband connection of 10Mbps was out of reach for 15 per cent of British households. 

Ofcom has said that the availability of “ultrafast” broadband of more than 100Mbps needs to be considered by the industry and policymakers

Reported in ‘The Times’ 9th December 2014 

Fortunately for our area, Gigaclear will be providing up to 1,000Mbps 

Missing Post Codes Added

Gigaclear have now added all missing Post Codes for our area.
The village of Glooston has also been added to the area to be covered by Gigaclear.