Gigaclear – you can sign-up now.
Thank you for Russell Brown’s kind introduction and overview. Whilst I like his analogy to buses, I prefer, in broadband speed terms, the idea of a (BT) bus and a (Gigaclear) Ferrari! David & Goliath may also be apt.
Over the next day or so I hope that Kings Cliffe and Apethorpe residents will begin to spot various Gigaclear posters distributed across the two villages. Gigaclear is very aware that to date our publicity has been pretty well non-existent, and I aim to address that. General Gigaclear posters should be spotted at the entrance to both villages. In addition, posters will also be going up to highlight the Kings Cliffe Memorial Hall Community Meeting on Tues 5th Aug., starting at 7.30pm.
Gigaclear itself is very aware that further information is needed by residents to reach an informed decision. The Village Meeting will be a perfect opportunity to understand the Gigaclear solution and its relative merits. I have been recruited as a local Gigaclear, Northants based representative. I can be contacted at ben.ramsden@gigaclear.com. In addition, Gigaclear is seeking the support of the local communities to collectively inform their friends and neighbours of the Gigaclear service.
Russell Brown has written about the need to reach a 30% sign-up figure across the two villages for us to make the significant investment of digging fibre to each and every property. I will elaborate on that at the Village Meeting. Where residents are in an existing contract, so long as that has less than 12 months remaining to run, we will take your order and count it towards the 30% - we will not of course take any money from you until the service is installed, tested and working.
The Gigaclear experience is that a number of questions arise about the difference between any proposed BT service and Gigaclear. A Helpston, Cambs resident has posted the following comment on the Marholm Cambs Village web site, going into just that – Russell has posted an extract already, but it is worth reiterating. The Peterborough Vale is another community where we are proposing to build.
“It is important to note that these (BT and Gigaclear) services are different although the costs are very similar.
BT's service is Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC). It uses a Fibre cable from the main telephone exchange to the local cabinet (the green box in most villages) and then from the cabinet it uses 30 year old copper cable to connect the service to your property. The speed you receive degrades over distance using the copper cable. Anything over 1km and it drops off dramatically. This cable does not go the way the crow flies so can be longer than you think. For those who wish to understand that better, here is a diagram that shows how the distance away from the cabinet affects your speed
www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/guides/adsl_and_distance.aspx. This is why BT cannot guarantee you a speed - you never really get what you pay for. It also is affected by contention, i.e. at 4pm when the kids go online most people experience a drop in speed as too many people are using the service.
Gigaclear's service is Fibre to your House (FTTH), this is a fibre optic cable directly into your property. It is a guaranteed speed UP and DOWN (i.e. 50Mb download and 50Mb upload) at all times of the day. Higher speeds are available today for those that wish or need it. The service is future proof and can scale easily beyond the current 1000Mbps if needed in the future. BT's cannot do this, it will need another major overhaul of their network to achieve that at the cost of millions of pounds.
The cost comparison is also interesting. Although the cheapest service from Gigaclear may look expensive at £37/mo, it makes much more sense if you pay an extra £6/mo to include your phone service with unlimited UK landline calls, inclusive of all of the features for which BT charge extra. The nearest unlimited high speed broadband service from BT costs £26/mo (after the introductory offers end), plus £15.99/mo line rental, plus £7.50/mo for unlimited landline calls – a total of £49.49/mo for a service costing £43/mo from Gigaclear which includes many more features, much faster upload speeds and the capability for much, much higher speed should you ever need it.”
Just to correct one of two points made by Russell. Our fastest package is 1,000Mbps, not the 10,000Mbps suggested. The core network is 10,000Mbps (or 10Gbps), to ensure the capacity to each and every end customer. And finally, Mimi’s post highlights just one or two of the many applications – Skype and on-line shopping – we are coming to expect today, if we had a half decent broadband. Catch-up TV (iPlayer and such like), gaming, Cloud computing for businesses, fast upload as well as download emailing etc.. All of the indications are those trends are set to gather further pace. On-line healthcare appears to be emerging a new application.
I hope as many as possible, from Kings Cliffe and Apethorpe are able to attend the 5th Aug meeting, and to help spread the word thereafter.
More information is available at
www.gigaclear.com.
