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I've recently had Gigaclear FTTP installed so thought I'd share my experiences as I've often found useful info here.
1) Ducting from pavement POT box to house
I had an install date but the week before a couple of Gigaclear contractors arrived (actually their subcontractors Avonline Networks) to install the fibre across my garden. The fibre is lightly armoured, about 8mm diameter, black cable and they laid it in 20mm flexible split ducting. They were quite helpful and, though they were keen to go a long around a flower bed under the lawn, went the direct route as I'd asked. The downsides were:
a) It wasn't buried very deep at all - the marker tape was just below the surface (barely covered) and the ducting was only 2-4" deep. Of course I didn't realise this until I properly investigated after they left! Two of them were there for <2h - I was quite surprised how quick they were for a run of about 7m including 1m under a pavement. Where it went under the lawn they just cut a slit so it was only just under the surface - would have to be careful with weeding tool. I spoke to Gigaclear chat afterwards and they said it should be laid at 6" deep but that it depends on the ground. They also said if I accidently chopped it Gigaclear would repair it for free... of course how long that might take is an interesting question.
b) Where the fibre went through a wall (either end) there's a tiny hole & the ducting stopped so there's a hard edge. What that means is there's absolutely no way they could replace the fibre without digging up various/all of the run.
c) No other fibre could be run in the same ducting - it's too narrow and has the hole limitations above
At the end of their work the fibre end was coiled up outside the house and apparently connected up.
2) Fibre through wall into house
I chose a point I thought would be relatively easy for them - just a simple hole. The engineer offered an outside grey box to have a coil of cable in it, but I declined thinking there would be a coil of fibre on the inside box. I was wrong! What they did was strip off the sleeve at the level of the plaster inside, and coil up a bit of the exposed fibre (i.e. very fragile). Therefore there is enough spare to re-terminate the fibre but not if it had to go back through the wall for re-routing. I asked about fibre repairs in the garden though and the engineer said they would never try to joint that but would re-run a new cable from the distribution point via the POT to the house... so maybe the lack of outside box doesn't matter so much in my situation. The ducting was clipped up the wall, with the fibre silicon sealed.
3) The ONT - Adtran
This is what I hadn't expected from my research. The ONT inside the house (July 23) is Adtran (https://www.adtran.com/-/media/adtran/resources/data-sheets/pdfs/sdx-600-series.pdf) XGS-PON. Other than the incoming fibre, it has connections for a (2?) digital phone, 10G, 1G (not connected), power. I didn't have a digital phone but, if you did, it means you don't need a separate (Vonage-like) box for it as I saw elsewhere online.
The engineer installing the ONT & setup was excellent - very friendly & explained what the machine was doing when joining the fibre to the pigtail, which was very interesting/impressive.
4) The speed!
I have a 500Mbps service, set up the Gigaclear Linksys Velops router/wifi and immediately had 500+ (e.g. 520) in both directions from Speedtest my phone!!! It's amazing - I never had a internet service which has exceeded the stated speed! I just hope that, as more people in my street are connected, it doesn't slow down much.
After that I switched to my own router (since I have invested in that and Ubiquiti wifi) - Gigaclear presents a DHCP WAN service on the 10G port and it worked first time.
Final thoughts
I don't know what the price Gigaclear will offer after the 18 month contract is up - if it's full price then it will be very expensive. I have Jurassic Fibre offering a competitive service too, but no other providers. If I switched to a new provider apparently they would need to dig a new trench and lay new fibre - it seems crazy that they do this, rather than the first one in laying that smooth green ducting that BT seems to use. That said, Gigaclear charged nothing for installation, so it's hard to be critical - if the legislation doesn't force it why would they do it voluntarily and help their competitors?! If I do switch I might be tempted to lay that ducting (much deeper) myself and ask Jurassic to use that - hard to see them objecting if it's ready to go, and then pull my Gigaclear fibre through that too.
Anyway, I know this is a long post but hope it is useful for anyone out there getting a Gigaclear installation in 2023. My advice would be that if the fibre will cross a garden, and you want it burying deeply, dig the trench yourself and maybe even put in your own duct.
HTH!
Simon
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