Gigaclear broadband
Discussion
Luke. said:
Hi QM, PM'd you, but obviously didn't get through. Do you know if there are any plans for Kent between Tonbridge and Hadlow, TN11?
Luke
I'll try and get an answer Monday Luke...Luke
I ony joined on the 4th of Jan and I'm keen to see a national map of where we are and where we aim to be....
Quickmoose said:
I'll try and get an answer Monday Luke...
I ony joined on the 4th of Jan and I'm keen to see a national map of where we are and where we aim to be....
Your enthusiasm is laudable but be a bit careful what you post lest your new employers take a dim view of having proprietary information made public.I ony joined on the 4th of Jan and I'm keen to see a national map of where we are and where we aim to be....
In the nicest possible way, I'd want to ask a few searching questions about peering, contention, backhaul capacity, traffic shaping and filtering before I got too excited. As an example, I have "200mb" VM FTTC, and most of the time it runs at or below 10% of the advertised speed - Usenet traffic, for instance, drops to around 10mb/s from 17:00 to about 00:30 (based on target IP, not protocol, so no wriggle room short of a VPN, and they appear to rate-limit type 50 packets as well). Nominal speed to the exchange is stable at or around the 200 down, 10 up, so this is core capacity and contention, not line quality.
They do also appear to have significant (exchange-level) outages every six to eight weeks, which gets a bit wearing.
Mind you, from my experience Virgin couldn't run a network if you gave them the manual, the BOFH and Cliff Stoll, so it's not really a surprise.
None of this is any way a criticism of Gigaclear, of whom I have no experience. It's just a general statement that I'd rather have 20mb of fibre into a proper tier 1 interconnect than 5Gb into whatever someone can squeeze out of BT's (or whomever's) UK frame.
Sadly the costs to install a 100mb fibre bearer from my house to Linx turned out to be prohibitive...
They do also appear to have significant (exchange-level) outages every six to eight weeks, which gets a bit wearing.
Mind you, from my experience Virgin couldn't run a network if you gave them the manual, the BOFH and Cliff Stoll, so it's not really a surprise.
None of this is any way a criticism of Gigaclear, of whom I have no experience. It's just a general statement that I'd rather have 20mb of fibre into a proper tier 1 interconnect than 5Gb into whatever someone can squeeze out of BT's (or whomever's) UK frame.
Sadly the costs to install a 100mb fibre bearer from my house to Linx turned out to be prohibitive...
Paddy_N_Murphy said:
Ditto on the PM disappearance.
I asked the Gigaclear site and it was flat 'no'.
It would be useful to know if 'its coming' or could be co-erced with enough community support......
Do you run it in North Yorkshire ?
Between Northallerton and Yarm in the villages ?
It might be worth contacting B4RN I think they mainly cover the North West, but it might be worth asking..I asked the Gigaclear site and it was flat 'no'.
It would be useful to know if 'its coming' or could be co-erced with enough community support......
Do you run it in North Yorkshire ?
Between Northallerton and Yarm in the villages ?
Well, I signed up for it.
They're currently digging the village up, and estimated go live date is April.
I just can't see how all this work is viable - they really are digging the village up...massive project, including them putting a fibre 'pot' (that you tap into should you sign up) outside every property.
I recon they'll go bankrupt unless they're getting massive government grants or something?
The silly thing is that we have a BT exchange right here in the village, and I get reasonable 'classic' broadband speeds up to 7Mbps. I'm surprised BT haven't enabled the exchange for super fast already.
They're currently digging the village up, and estimated go live date is April.
I just can't see how all this work is viable - they really are digging the village up...massive project, including them putting a fibre 'pot' (that you tap into should you sign up) outside every property.
I recon they'll go bankrupt unless they're getting massive government grants or something?
The silly thing is that we have a BT exchange right here in the village, and I get reasonable 'classic' broadband speeds up to 7Mbps. I'm surprised BT haven't enabled the exchange for super fast already.
Dr Doofenshmirtz said:
Well, I signed up for it.
They're currently digging the village up, and estimated go live date is April.
I just can't see how all this work is viable - they really are digging the village up...massive project, including them putting a fibre 'pot' (that you tap into should you sign up) outside every property.
I recon they'll go bankrupt unless they're getting massive government grants or something?
The silly thing is that we have a BT exchange right here in the village, and I get reasonable 'classic' broadband speeds up to 7Mbps. I'm surprised BT haven't enabled the exchange for super fast already.
There is the rub. BT are currently under attack for doing almost as little as possible. If however they get wind of our impending arrival, all of a sudden they're upgrading the area. Funny that.They're currently digging the village up, and estimated go live date is April.
I just can't see how all this work is viable - they really are digging the village up...massive project, including them putting a fibre 'pot' (that you tap into should you sign up) outside every property.
I recon they'll go bankrupt unless they're getting massive government grants or something?
The silly thing is that we have a BT exchange right here in the village, and I get reasonable 'classic' broadband speeds up to 7Mbps. I'm surprised BT haven't enabled the exchange for super fast already.
For such a small company, Gigaclear were/are ignored as a pretender...no threat.
But if that was the case BT wouldn't be investing in finding out where we're heading.
As our funding is private and limited currenlty it's not in our interest to go head-to-head.....yet.
Our owner was recently invited to a parlimentary Q&A, where upon he pointed out BT's short comings and the stone walling by such groups as Network Rail who take ages to agree terms and charge huge amounts to go under or over their infrastructure..... all good fun.
Gigaclear are funded by long term investment funds, and 'we' recently got awarded a £25m grant from theEuropean Union.
To that end we're currently very well funded, with a sound business case for a long while yet. Once we're in an area, take up outstrips the competition, so at some point our customer base will take over the funding needs.
A portion of our work is Governemnt sponsored areas that are bid for and won...the rest is pure speculative build....
Gigaclear also recently acquired a similar outfit in the Cornwall area, so whoever decides or oversees our budgets are not afraid of aggressive expansion.
The telecoms sector is rife with mergers and acquisitions, the physical networks and brands go round and round and round. It's reminiscent of companies like Nynex who in the 90's installed huge franchises of Cable TV and fibre optic networks...large expensive construction projects, a decent infrastructure/asset....and then market forces shuffling the goods around.
Whether Gigaclear become a major player or simply the investment tool to install a proper fibre network for a 3rd party to buy in the future, the aim right now is as it appears: the advertised speeds are delivered, we won't be stopping the intensive build aspect anytime soon and the speeds will only go up
Quickmoose said:
There is the rub. BT are currently under attack for doing almost as little as possible. If however they get wind of our impending arrival, all of a sudden they're upgrading the area. Funny that.
For such a small company, Gigaclear were/are ignored as a pretender...no threat.
But if that was the case BT wouldn't be investing in finding out where we're heading.
As our funding is private and limited currenlty it's not in our interest to go head-to-head.....yet.
Our owner was recently invited to a parlimentary Q&A, where upon he pointed out BT's short comings and the stone walling by such groups as Network Rail who take ages to agree terms and charge huge amounts to go under or over their infrastructure..... all good fun.
Gigaclear are funded by long term investment funds, and 'we' recently got awarded a £25m grant from theEuropean Union.
To that end we're currently very well funded, with a sound business case for a long while yet. Once we're in an area, take up outstrips the competition, so at some point our customer base will take over the funding needs.
A portion of our work is Governemnt sponsored areas that are bid for and won...the rest is pure speculative build....
Gigaclear also recently acquired a similar outfit in the Cornwall area, so whoever decides or oversees our budgets are not afraid of aggressive expansion.
The telecoms sector is rife with mergers and acquisitions, the physical networks and brands go round and round and round. It's reminiscent of companies like Nynex who in the 90's installed huge franchises of Cable TV and fibre optic networks...large expensive construction projects, a decent infrastructure/asset....and then market forces shuffling the goods around.
Whether Gigaclear become a major player or simply the investment tool to install a proper fibre network for a 3rd party to buy in the future, the aim right now is as it appears: the advertised speeds are delivered, we won't be stopping the intensive build aspect anytime soon and the speeds will only go up
Long may it continue. For such a small company, Gigaclear were/are ignored as a pretender...no threat.
But if that was the case BT wouldn't be investing in finding out where we're heading.
As our funding is private and limited currenlty it's not in our interest to go head-to-head.....yet.
Our owner was recently invited to a parlimentary Q&A, where upon he pointed out BT's short comings and the stone walling by such groups as Network Rail who take ages to agree terms and charge huge amounts to go under or over their infrastructure..... all good fun.
Gigaclear are funded by long term investment funds, and 'we' recently got awarded a £25m grant from theEuropean Union.
To that end we're currently very well funded, with a sound business case for a long while yet. Once we're in an area, take up outstrips the competition, so at some point our customer base will take over the funding needs.
A portion of our work is Governemnt sponsored areas that are bid for and won...the rest is pure speculative build....
Gigaclear also recently acquired a similar outfit in the Cornwall area, so whoever decides or oversees our budgets are not afraid of aggressive expansion.
The telecoms sector is rife with mergers and acquisitions, the physical networks and brands go round and round and round. It's reminiscent of companies like Nynex who in the 90's installed huge franchises of Cable TV and fibre optic networks...large expensive construction projects, a decent infrastructure/asset....and then market forces shuffling the goods around.
Whether Gigaclear become a major player or simply the investment tool to install a proper fibre network for a 3rd party to buy in the future, the aim right now is as it appears: the advertised speeds are delivered, we won't be stopping the intensive build aspect anytime soon and the speeds will only go up
Digitalize said:
I imagine investors are more expecting the company to build a fibre network that will then be sold for a large profit to a bigger telecoms company.
hmm almost inevitable, even the biggest players are up for grabs at some point.Vodafone nearly bought Virgin Media last year..
The owner's 'vision' is simply to build it, provide a service that leads/competes with the best in the world.
Dr Doofenshmirtz said:
Anyone here using Gigaclear broadband?
I live in a rural village, and can currently only get traditional 'up to' 8mbps broadband. Gigaclear are currently installing their pure fiber service into the village, and I'm tempted. But it's quite expensive at nearly £40 per month for 50/50 mbps.
I'm worried that if I sign up, BT will enable the village for fast broadband (albeit using the traditional copper to the premises), but costing much less than Gigaclear.
Any experience?
why would you assume BT is cheaper than that?I live in a rural village, and can currently only get traditional 'up to' 8mbps broadband. Gigaclear are currently installing their pure fiber service into the village, and I'm tempted. But it's quite expensive at nearly £40 per month for 50/50 mbps.
I'm worried that if I sign up, BT will enable the village for fast broadband (albeit using the traditional copper to the premises), but costing much less than Gigaclear.
Any experience?
I am on a Gigaclear line and have been for a year or so.
I was one of those on the local committee pushing it
BT/BDUK were not going to do my area so in a sense this was our only opportunity for SFBB.
I'm on their 100/100Mbps symmetrical connection.
There has been just one outage during the last year from midday-ish to late evening due to a contractor going though a backhaul fibre cable some 40 miles+ away. I received a text from GC to tell me it had failed before I knew it had failed
Apart from that it just works continuously.
Any 2 hour type maintenance is done in the very early morning (ie 3 am) and you get notifications prior.
........and 100Mbps both up and down is what you get 365/24/7.
I never get any drop outs.
I never need to log into the router and there are obviously no line stats
The router has 4 off 1Gbps ports - there are/were using a Genexis Hybrid Live unit from Holland.
(I'm using a 1Gbps switch to distribute).
In practice UK based speed testing sites cannot handle a 100Mbps upload link so, to get a representative upload test result you need to use servers in Holland - which has a lot of FTTP.
Pings to google.com are 5ms.
These are all wired connections and tests.
I have noticed locally that having such a mega-service available at the door starts to show up people's less than ideal networks and computers within the house. So folks are having to seriously sort out this aspect. I know of one person who has a v.large place using Ubiquiti commercial grade multi-access wireless points to give them universal high speed access with no drops and proper commercial quality hand over between access points and no 'hanging on' problems.
No idea about GC's BDUK projects but note also that on their commercial builds their termination point is at the front property boundary. Sure they provide a service to install it from there to your house or indeed you can DIY it as I did: but note that YOU are going to be paying for that install length. So if you have a long drive/large front garden take account of this.
The limiting factor is actually the capacity of the destination website to deliver the data at these speed. Virus updates and ms updates seem to come in at 60Mbps typically.
I don't do cloud stuff but others have said to me that most of the sites cannot handle anything like 100Mbps upload and it is throttled by the the cloud service.
The real benefit of such a service though is when you have a large family or say all the grandchildren around for Christmas all busy doing lots of things all at once on lots of different websites where say the website can only provide data at 10Mbps but you can have 10 people all doing things at 10Mbps and a Gigaclear 100Mbps connection will handle them all...in practice their base option of 50/50 Mbps is enough for most!
Note to those that understand these things on here that this is not a GPON type broadcast FTTP system as BT use. This is the gold standard of a true point to point FTTP distribution where each house has dedicated single mode fibre which goes all the way back to the controlling village cabinet with no splitters or amalgamation points on the way back - as you get with a GPON broadcast type FTTP system. Point to points are always symmetrical: GPON never is with the upload always lower than the download.
I was one of those on the local committee pushing it
BT/BDUK were not going to do my area so in a sense this was our only opportunity for SFBB.
I'm on their 100/100Mbps symmetrical connection.
There has been just one outage during the last year from midday-ish to late evening due to a contractor going though a backhaul fibre cable some 40 miles+ away. I received a text from GC to tell me it had failed before I knew it had failed
Apart from that it just works continuously.
Any 2 hour type maintenance is done in the very early morning (ie 3 am) and you get notifications prior.
........and 100Mbps both up and down is what you get 365/24/7.
I never get any drop outs.
I never need to log into the router and there are obviously no line stats
The router has 4 off 1Gbps ports - there are/were using a Genexis Hybrid Live unit from Holland.
(I'm using a 1Gbps switch to distribute).
In practice UK based speed testing sites cannot handle a 100Mbps upload link so, to get a representative upload test result you need to use servers in Holland - which has a lot of FTTP.
Pings to google.com are 5ms.
These are all wired connections and tests.
I have noticed locally that having such a mega-service available at the door starts to show up people's less than ideal networks and computers within the house. So folks are having to seriously sort out this aspect. I know of one person who has a v.large place using Ubiquiti commercial grade multi-access wireless points to give them universal high speed access with no drops and proper commercial quality hand over between access points and no 'hanging on' problems.
No idea about GC's BDUK projects but note also that on their commercial builds their termination point is at the front property boundary. Sure they provide a service to install it from there to your house or indeed you can DIY it as I did: but note that YOU are going to be paying for that install length. So if you have a long drive/large front garden take account of this.
The limiting factor is actually the capacity of the destination website to deliver the data at these speed. Virus updates and ms updates seem to come in at 60Mbps typically.
I don't do cloud stuff but others have said to me that most of the sites cannot handle anything like 100Mbps upload and it is throttled by the the cloud service.
The real benefit of such a service though is when you have a large family or say all the grandchildren around for Christmas all busy doing lots of things all at once on lots of different websites where say the website can only provide data at 10Mbps but you can have 10 people all doing things at 10Mbps and a Gigaclear 100Mbps connection will handle them all...in practice their base option of 50/50 Mbps is enough for most!
Note to those that understand these things on here that this is not a GPON type broadcast FTTP system as BT use. This is the gold standard of a true point to point FTTP distribution where each house has dedicated single mode fibre which goes all the way back to the controlling village cabinet with no splitters or amalgamation points on the way back - as you get with a GPON broadcast type FTTP system. Point to points are always symmetrical: GPON never is with the upload always lower than the download.
Their commercial roll out works on the basis of
1. Within reach of independent backhaul - less easy than you might think!
They have never to my knowledge used BT as backhaul. My area is via Cable and wireless which is a business to business only subsidiary of Vodafone. So if you are a remote village with backhaul 10+ miles away then the economics for GC just will not stack up
2. Reasonable sized compact-ish village so looking at 400 houses size min. Lots of really rural remote houses are bad news as the amount of fibre run meters per house connected becomes large - again economics. Lots of rural soft verge is great as it is cheap to dig in and restore. Lots of hard pavements and tarmac are bad news. If the economics don't look as if they will work out then GC will I'm afraid not be interested.
3. That 30% of the village/area under considered commit and sign up to them with a sig' on the dotted line and a direct debit in place before they will commit to building the network. These are not mere expressions of interest - but formal commitments. They have to have this sort of guarantee in place first that people will take the service prior to them investing maybe near £1m on a new fibre network.
...and believe me that 30% is VERY difficult to get even in places with BB of 2Mbps.
The first 10% is easy - they will sign up on day minus one.
the next 10% are persuadable
the final 10% are a nightmare to find - we ended up a handful short at one point and were wondering where on earth we was going to get them from.
Even then remember there are still the other 70% whole frankly do not give a toss about SFBB, though GC know that more will sign up once the network is in place and I guess that is factored in to their calculations of needing 30% to pre-commit.
1. Within reach of independent backhaul - less easy than you might think!
They have never to my knowledge used BT as backhaul. My area is via Cable and wireless which is a business to business only subsidiary of Vodafone. So if you are a remote village with backhaul 10+ miles away then the economics for GC just will not stack up
2. Reasonable sized compact-ish village so looking at 400 houses size min. Lots of really rural remote houses are bad news as the amount of fibre run meters per house connected becomes large - again economics. Lots of rural soft verge is great as it is cheap to dig in and restore. Lots of hard pavements and tarmac are bad news. If the economics don't look as if they will work out then GC will I'm afraid not be interested.
3. That 30% of the village/area under considered commit and sign up to them with a sig' on the dotted line and a direct debit in place before they will commit to building the network. These are not mere expressions of interest - but formal commitments. They have to have this sort of guarantee in place first that people will take the service prior to them investing maybe near £1m on a new fibre network.
...and believe me that 30% is VERY difficult to get even in places with BB of 2Mbps.
The first 10% is easy - they will sign up on day minus one.
the next 10% are persuadable
the final 10% are a nightmare to find - we ended up a handful short at one point and were wondering where on earth we was going to get them from.
Even then remember there are still the other 70% whole frankly do not give a toss about SFBB, though GC know that more will sign up once the network is in place and I guess that is factored in to their calculations of needing 30% to pre-commit.
The above is an exellent summary of us.
We have/do you use BT for backhaul if there is no alternative...
I've struggled to find a conclusive list of areas we are in and areas we plan to be in, but as said before even if/when I find those "areas we're going to be in", I won't be posting themn.
I will report back on the areas we have to date and then perhaps givre an indication of how or if we intend to expand from those locations.... so bear with me..
We have/do you use BT for backhaul if there is no alternative...
I've struggled to find a conclusive list of areas we are in and areas we plan to be in, but as said before even if/when I find those "areas we're going to be in", I won't be posting themn.
I will report back on the areas we have to date and then perhaps givre an indication of how or if we intend to expand from those locations.... so bear with me..
Brilliant - thanks for taking the time to write all that 
I now can't wait to get it. I may even pay the extra fiver and double the speed to 100 Mbps full duplex.
One thing I hadn't thought of - laying the fibre from the pot to my house...hmmm, time to get my shovel and dig a channel in the front lawn
I now can't wait to get it. I may even pay the extra fiver and double the speed to 100 Mbps full duplex.
One thing I hadn't thought of - laying the fibre from the pot to my house...hmmm, time to get my shovel and dig a channel in the front lawn
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