Gigaclear

Does anyone have experience of Gigaclear installations.

I have been asked to help a friend with his equipment - power, LAN, &c but Gigaclear are not too helpful up front.

Do they have an outside Customer Service Point and an Internal ONT? If so, do they limit the separation?

Apparently, they will not routinely do any work, including feeding cables through a hole, more than 3m above the ground - unless you pay a large premium. Is that true?

They will run up to 100m from the street box - which in this case will need to be underground. How do they do that? Dig? Mole?

Any restrictions on where it can go - if teh 3m rule is correct then the garage is teh next best option.


Comments please.

Having seen their installations in Braintree. They tend to dig a tench in the middle of a foot path and then feed everyone off that in a street.

Can't comment on the 3m above ground premium.

Their Twitter team tend to be really good at helping.

They installs tend to be very "Virgin Media" in type with a fibre termination box externally which then feeds an internal socket.

Edited by Bryer (Tue 29-Nov-22 12:59:39)

Thanks, unfortunately this is not a "standard" installation!

It is a single house in the middle of no where! They cut their trench down the middle of the road and put an access point on the verge ready for the house to be connected. From there to the house in 60m of lawn or hard packed drive - no walls, no path ...

They will probably ask your friend to dig the 60m across their lawn but will supply the duct

This might be helpful: Gigaclear_Wholesale_Gigaclear_Installation_2018_v1_b791d4d7f0.pdf

In particular, it says "Technicians are not permitted to work above a height of 5m".

Thats what I have been after ...

Reading briefly, they will dig a trench - which is fine although it may be 60m of gravel and soil with NO obstructions such as walls. The 3m I had been told about is actually 5m - that will make it reasonable too. It should give two options - a bedroom where teh current hub is located or a garage..

3m would me - no first floo, but 5m makes it possible.

I had a Gigaclear installation seven years ago. There is a pot (Like one for water) on the boundary where I asked it to be put. In the pot there is a little junction box.

My installation was a DIY effort, unlike all my neighbours. Gigaclear supplied an installation kit which included a 50m cable with plugs on each end, and some bits for making it easy for a cable to come up an outside wall and into the house via a hole. I dug a trench about 10" deep and ran the fibre cable in a blue water pipe which was easy to buy. The cable goes in a copper water pipe up the side of my 2 storey house then through the soffit to my attic where the other end plugs into the Gigaclear router.

I used the copper pipe because the upper half of my house is covered in tiles and there was no easy way to attach the fibre cable to it.

The main rules for installing the cable are not to bend it to much and not to take the caps of the end so that the ends get dirty.

A couple of years ago I had the router put into bridge mode so that I could use my own Pfsense then Opnsense router.

If Gigaclear or their contractor won't do what your friend wants and DIY is not an option then maybe someone else can be found. You could ask Gigaclear if they will provide a suitable cable and maybe an installation kit like they used to supply

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I had a Gigaclear installation seven years ago. There is a pot (Like one for water) on the boundary where I asked it to be put.

Cool. FYI, these are generally known as "toby boxes".

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I had a Gigaclear installation seven years ago. There is a pot (Like one for water) on the boundary where I asked it to be put.

Cool. FYI, these are generally known as "toby boxes".

That is what I always called them - slightly confused when the friend I will be helping referred to "thre Pot" ... then when I read the Gigaclear document IP75 linked to, they refer to the "connecton pot".

I found them to be pretty accommodating. For my installation they lifted and relaid about 5m of block paving, no trouble at all.