Gigaclear not interested in connecting us

Hi,

I live in a village in south Devon where the local exchange has FTTC enabled but due to the line lengths and age/condition of some of the lines the service is not that great. As I work from home and video conference daily having a decent connection is pretty important for me.

I was very please to see that Gigaclear have started installing lines in our area and started to hear people say they would be signing up, but each time I checked my own postcode it would say the service is not available. The other day I decided to check some other postcodes in the area to see what Gigaclear reported their status as and saw that they get a message saying the service would be coming soon, the rollout plan message even included the name of my village in the message as an area that would be getting covered.

I contacted Gigaclear for clarification and after initially being told I would be able to get the service soon another response came back saying they would not be connecting my postcode. I responded saying that as they are installing their network in our area already what level of interest would they need in order to connect our village up. The response came back again that they have no plans to connect up our village at this time.

After some investigation Gigaclear are installing their network literally all around our village, in every direction out of our village it is possible to sign up to their service. Less that 0.8 miles away they are offering connections and they have been installing a line across the road about 0.4 miles from the village.

I find this very frustrating that all of the tiny places around us with a couple of houses are going to be able to get 1gb connections yet the largest village in the area is not being covered by their network and Gigaclear are giving no explanation for this other than to say they are not looking to connect the village at this time.

Is anyone able to provide any insight as to why this might be? Is it funding for areas not covered by FTTC or bt/openreach preventing them from connecting areas with FTTC? Something else?

Thanks

In reply to a post by jamied:

After some investigation Gigaclear are installing their network literally all around our village, in every direction out of our village it is possible to sign up to their service. Less that 0.8 miles away they are offering connections and they have been installing a line across the road about 0.4 miles from the village.
...
Is anyone able to provide any insight as to why this might be?

I see exactly the same with Gigaclear in Kent.

My guess is that they only want to do "soft" installations - digging across fields and along verges. I suspect they are not prepared to dig up pavements, nor use PIA to share BT ducts or poles (which is understandable).

One of the villages they are installing near us is a very cramped place with hardly and space to run cables. Logistically our village would be much easier to connect as there is a lots of �soft� and private land around that would be easy to install on.

I think it has to do with existing FTTC enabled areas as another village in the area is in the same position, installations all around but not being connected, they have FTTC also.

Where I live in Kent, Gigaclear wanted about 30% of properties to sign up before they would start work. It is difficult enough to get that level of commitment when the alternative is 2Mbps ADSL let alone any FTTC service.

You could ask Gigaclear what level of commitment they would require and then canvas your neighbours to see if enough are likely to agree. Truespeed are an alternative to Gigaclear.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

You could ask Gigaclear what level of commitment they would require and then canvas your neighbours to see if enough are likely to agree. Truespeed are an alternative to Gigaclear.

I�ve done this already and they simply responded saying there are no plans to connect the village which makes me think there is some other reason other than interest level.

I was in one of the unlucky villages in Wiltshire that missed out on Gigaclear due to council ineptitude.

I was a GC champion and went to all of the public meetings. We reached over 30% take up in many of the villages but not quite all of them, before the council decided to go with BDUK. Ironically that "passed" less properties than GC planned and we are still waiting for infills.

Like what it sounds like in your area, we were dispersed and some properties were off the main cable route or too far from the nearest village to be connected, and were out of scope. Even soft dig costs and if a long cable spur/detour is needed, then that may exceed the roughly £1000 cost per property that GC work to.

In our case, those properties had the option to pay a contribution to get a GC connection via a spur off the main network. Like the Openreach community partnership, it wasn't the whole cost, but from what I remember, it was the cost over the £1000 per property. This was 5 years ago and the GC approach may have changed, but its worth getting in touch with your local GC champion and getting them to ask GC head office.

Given the price some people on here are having to pay for OR FTTP, paying GC a contribution to come 0.4m/400m is going to be cheap in comparison.

GC won't overbuild in OR FTTC areas. It goes against their business model and their investors won't sanction it. All to do with the un-level playing field as BDUK is subsidised, where as GC is all private investment.

Edited by sidef (Thu 23-Aug-18 20:12:11)

Clue is in the location South Devon so they may be going where CDS (the bduk project for area) wanted them to, and changing that or expanding may not be as simple as extending in a commercial area

As for sidef saying GC is all private investment, having a number of BDUK contracts now under their belt this is clearly not the case all the time with Gigaclear

If it's part of a BDUK contract then GC will go where they are paid to go.

They don't get paid to install to priorities that already have 24Mb+ FTTC so yes the FTTC probably is the problem.

They have contracts with BDUK and they are already behind schedule so can't just detour left and spend a month adding another village..

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 24-Aug-18 12:30:25)

My typo disease is spreading, presume you meant contracts and not contacts

haha yes I'm on my mobile. thanks, edited.