Gigaclear quoting £20,000 - £30,000 for installation

We’ve been trying to get Gigaclear to connect us since April. They eventually did a survey, they need to run the cable through some woodland but said it would only be a 6” deep trench. We had 3 sets of workmen turn up last week to connect us but now they are saying it’s going to cost £20,000 - £30,000. I thought they had funding of millions to connect rural residents? There is absolutely no way we can afford this and they are the only provider in the area. We currently have BT copper cabling and speed of 5 download on a good day, upload is usually 0.5.

Is there some sort of funding we need to apply for?

Millions in funding doesn't go far if it costs £30K to connect customers. They will have an amount set aside per customer but over that they would need the customer to pay towards the costs. Sounds like yours is a particularly difficult one to run. There isn't any significant funding you could apply for that would make up for that amount of costs.

In reply to a post by CassandraRaven:

they need to run the cable through some woodland but said it would only be a 6” deep trench. We had 3 sets of workmen turn up last week to connect us but now they are saying it’s going to cost £20,000 - £30,000.

I suspect there is other important information missing from your post (may be you are unaware of) that is the cause of the connection costs being so high. These costs are more than a few hundred metres of trench and ducting in soft ground. What part of the UK are you in and do you have more info than you have currently provided to account for these costs?

I'd look at Starlink instead, currently on offer for £199 for a refurbished unit.

I think it's about 300m. They said they would have to get a longer cable, also that they could use the BT route into the building - but both options are coming up the same cost. We are just outside Stroud in Gloucestershire. Apparently Gigaclear have the contract for this area - does that mean we can't try with any other fibre providers? The roads either side have fibre, they said there is a terminal with 6 connection points ready to connect just at the top of the hill directly opposite the building. They did a survey and had said it wouldn't be a problem, even went as far as sending two teams to start the work and a team to 'blow' the cable through. I just think it's weird that they did a sudden u-turn after doing the survey and that any residential property would be charged that much.

We are in a valley with woodland on one side, I've downloaded the app and tested the range, we've got about a quarter of the view coming up blue I'm not sure that's enough visibility. Three quarters of the space is obstructed. Also, our flat is in a grade 1 listed building and can't have satellite dishes visible, which makes it even trickier. There is absolutely no mobile reception here either.

I need to be able to do video calls for work now so this is getting worrying. I run meditations and teach so it's not suitable to sit in a cafe for that. Any further ideas would be welcome! I'm actually considering getting starlink and a battery pack and driving out in my car! I'm self employed and can't afford to hire an office or space at the moment.

Any provider can deliver anywhere. However, a provider is not going to come into your area to deliver to a single address as there is a lot of infrastructure to install (£30K is peanuts compared to the costs of all the infrastructure) - so unless other providers have plans in the area you are out of luck.

Gigaclear do have a contract with the local authority to deliver but that is not exclusive - other providers can do what they want - although it may not be all that attractive to them.

As far as the charge, I think some people have been quoted 10 times as much for installation by providers depending on how complex the install is.

How is the mobile coverage - have you checked all mobile providers to see if any of them can give a decent signal. Unlimited data on most mobile providers is relatively low cost these days.

That is very interesting, thank you for taking the time to reply. It is a single address, we have a very small flat inside a bigger building we look after so there are no other residential addresses here. We moved in 8 years ago and were told by BT that we would be able to get a certain speed but that never happened despite all these years of promises of improvement. When fibre went in locally earlier this year we thought we'd finally be in luck! I've half a mind to get a shovel and dig the trench myself lol

No coverage at all with any providers unfortunately. BT tried to set us up with a box for that but we can't get any signal here as the building is in a narrow valley.