Gigaclear

[MartinBainbridge]

Has anyone got any advice regarding getting set up with gigaclear? Time to set up, availability, set up and ongoing costs, how to keep a phone line or vonage?

Any help or sharing of experiences welcome.

The main driver for this is continues drop outs on catch up TV/streaming.

I'm currently with bt fir phone and broadband getting 10+Mb download speed but not consistently.

[Russell Brown]

The Gigaclear connection comes in on a real-fibre so your current internet connection over copper wires is not going to be effected; there's no 'changeover' so you can have Gigaclear turned on and disconnect your current service when you're happy (contract terms for cancellation with your current ISP notwithstanding).

You can keep your current copper-wire phone line if you want (you'll obviously have to pay line rental on it) or move your phone connection onto Vonage or any other SIP style phone service provider and do away with the copper line and the associated rental.

HTH

[MartinBainbridge]

Thanks for the info Russell. How long does it take to set up and what are the set up costs? Do you know if every house in the village can access fibre?

[Russell Brown]

Setup time... I don't know as I was part of the initial trial so my install was unusual. Shouldn't take long though.

Costs: the latest prices are all on the Gigaclear website (http://gigaclear.com).

There's loads of guff to read on the <now defunct but left lying around for old times sake> KAHSI website: http://kahsi.kingscliffe.net/

All of the houses in the village can get Gigaclear except for those on SovG (Persimmon problems). You should have a little 'pot' on the boundary of your property.

[MartinBainbridge]

That's excellent. Many thanks!

[MartinBainbridge]

A little update...

The cost of set up in total is £195. This seems extortionate as my brother in law recently had Virgin connections them in Manchester and they did that for free.

Does anybody know the time frame in which the network will be open to use by the big names?

[Russell Brown]

I think you're including the cost of Boxcom installing your fibre cable and router in your house; you can do this yourself and save £95.

Regarding the Gigaclear fibres being used by the 'big boys'; I was chatting to them a couple of weeks ago about this and it's probably a year or more away. Even then, you'd still have to install (or pay someone else to install) the fibre and router in your house (it's not like so-called BT Fibre where they're not actually providing fibre but using the pre-existing olde-worlde copper wires).

[MartinBainbridge]

Thanks Russell. Something to ponder on.

[JohnT]

For our connection, the Boxcom fee was £155.00 including VAT (for armoured cable across our lawn etc). The Gigaclear connection fee is a further £100-00 inc VAT.

These are one-off costs, and I have to say that Boxcom were pretty quick, and made a neat job of digging across our lawn and running the cable into the house.

The location of the Gigaclear provided router is worthy of thought. To simplify the installation in our house, we placed the router at the front of the house and it is necessary to use wireless network extenders to give a good wireless signal through the house for tablets and phones etc.

For our main computers, I have used TP-Link AV 500 powerline adaptors through the mains and connected to each computer using ethernet cable. The result is spectacular speed and stability, not necessarily available through the wireless network. I have used the same adaptors for our Sky box for example.

All this is extra £££ of course and you might need a much simpler setup.

We had to give some notice to terminate our old broadband service through the phone line so there was some change-over time available - however, in reality it was all up and running very quickly (within a couple of days on and off) with a bit of forward planning.

We are very pleased with the Gigaclear broadband.

We havent decided about the phone services yet.

[MartinBainbridge]

Gigaclear got in touch with me again with a revised (increased £) offer of £129.99 for installation and £100 one off connection fee. In total,  this is more than we pay for one years broadband with bt.

Not sure how they are in business?

[JohnT]

It's quicker and less variable. The download speed is noticeably faster (for streaming TV programmes etc), but, more noticeably, the upload speed (sending large email attachments etc) is fantastically quick.

I guess it all depends how much you value the additional speed.

[MartinBainbridge]

Absolutely true John. It would appear I don't value it at £230 before I commence receiving a service.

[Wooding]

We have had gigaclear for about 9 months now and can safely say it's worth it. As we have recently upgraded to sky q it's been a pleasure to choose anything on demand and watch it straight away without any buffering and with multiple users on at the same time streaming and downloading. We simple couldn't do this with BT and it used to take us an hour to download a film or programme to a point where we could begin to watch it.

[Rob. M]

It would appear I don't value it at £230 before I commence receiving a service. Seems top end. We paid around £140 signing up early to an offer. Considered this one off Gigaclear installation cost rather like installing 'natural gas' when it was offered to the village, an investment for the future.
Problems arose within the property using older TP Link extenders, later solved by running  extension cable from the front to the back of the house, to a newer TP Link close to the rear office desktop PC. Our mobile devices mostly work fine from the Gigaclear router. Signal range depends upon the layout/construction of individual properties. One quickly takes Gigaclear speeds for granted. Using friend's computers over BT landlines is increasingly accompanied by apologies for the slowness of their PC! We enjoy streaming TV features without buffering and Vonage phones around the house. Depending upon usage not everyone may need ultra high-speed broadband but most are likely to later. It's a great benefit to the village to have it available.

[Russell Brown]

It would appear I don't value it at £230 before I commence receiving a service.

To put that in context, BT quoted me £25,000 to install a 100Mb fibre  so £230 doesn't seem that excessive

SovG had to raise £12,500 to pay BT to install FTTC after Persimmon refused to allow Gigaclear to install fibre on the estate without a huge ex-gratia payment up front.

As I said before, you can install yourself saving £129.99 or find someone else who will trench in the fibre from your boundary into your house and install the router. It doesn't have to be Boxcom and it's not complicated - the £100 connection charge is, mainly, to cover the cost of the cable kit (Google 25m pre-terminated fibre and you'll see it's not cheap).

Personally, I don't see £129.99 as being excessive for a Boxcom team to come to Cliffe and do all the work for you.

On the flip side, with a lot of the village now using Gigaclear and SovG getting FTTC, the ADSL service (conventional broadband) isn't likely to degrade too quickly from additional use (congestion) so if you're content with your current ADSL service stick with it until you get to the point where you aren't.