Anyone got Gigaclear fibre broadband?

I have two Gigaclear access points. Been great. Watch out for cost after first year. Went from £17 a month to £40 odd.

The initial offers did look too good to be true

They are busy digging up round us for the infrastructure along with the Fastershire partnership (Herefordshire and Gloucestershire) installing in rural areas of the county. It may be different in your area but whilst they have been working hard it has taken over a year in our village since they started. They dug up half of our track last September and said they would be back to finish it ‘in a few weeks’. That didn’t happen and we still have no idea when we are going to have the option to be connected. We were told it might be around Christmas ‘22 then it was spring ‘23 now we have been told they won’t be finishing our section till the summer holidays to minimise disruption.
Tldr: don’t cancel any contracts until they have actually completed the installation work.

As mentioned, watch out for price increases. It's the usual phone up and complain, and they'll bung another 100Mpbs on the speed and knock a tenner off.

And also watch out for a need for extra mesh nodes. I think we're now up to 5 (thick walls!), but they do cost another fiver a month each.

I think we're now up to 400Mpbs, and £50 a month. But it's worth it; we'd lose the signal every time the wind blew when it was overhead wires. And the upload speeds are great.

Another thing to remember - at the end of the end of the contract you can't nip off and join BT/Voda/etc. Completely different fibre provider, and your alternatives are https://gigaclear.com/our-partners

And possibly the most important to some people....no landline. Great for us...but some people like it. I did rig up a free incoming VOIP using GSWave and Sipgate, porting the existing number. But 5 years down the line, no-one calls it now.

I have it. 300mbs up and down - paying 50/month. I should really try and get them to charge me less but they have me over a barrel as there is no other real option.

Service wise had no issues in the two years I've been here. Being able to upload at 300mbs is really useful.

And also watch out for a need for extra mesh nodes. I think we’re now up to 5 (thick walls!), but they do cost another fiver a month each

That sounds pesky. With thick walls I’d be looking at running some cable around to connect the access points just to keep the speed. Could you just buy a mesh system of your own and offset the capital outlay with the £5/node per month? If you’re paying £20/month for 4 extra nodes that’s quite a bit extra.

Fastershire here as well. They welched on our 'lot' (South Herefordshire) after 4 years of promising to deliver fibre (and being paid to do so). Apparently they fell out with Herefordshire council quite spectacularly over it, which didn't stop them failing to install any infrastructure for 200+ houses! So Im probably a bit tainted 😉

Would agree with poster up there ^^^ - wait until they've installed an access point that just needs a connection to your house. Definitely over promise / under deliver.

don’t cancel any contracts until they have actually completed the installation work.

This. They've been digging up our village since late last year and invited me to sign up in February for a very reasonable price. I thought yay! 21st century broadband comes to the home counties at last, but when I asked them when my service could go live they said maybe March 2024.

@prettygreenparrot

to be honest, when we signed up for the mesh, the speed we took had 2 extra nodes thrown in. Then when we renewed, for some reason they sent another two nodes. I'm not paying for any more, and I think they think we only have 3 still.

Whether this is an indication of what Gigaclear are like, I couldn't say.

And, as another indication, they were only supposed to do the part of the village BT/Openreach wouldn't do. Gigaclear did the whole village by mistake. Good for us. Bad for people paying Openreach

Anyone got any more recent experience?

Just looking at switching from EE even with the phone option it still £5 cheaper than EE for a gazillion times higher speeds

Also wonder if I'd be able to use my current ASUS router as an extension node in anyway. Or maybe it goes in the box for when we have to switch back to normal broadband in a couple of years time when the prices go up!!

What do you people do with all that speed?

<p style="text-align: left;">What do you people do with all that speed</p>

I waste all but 20mb of mine! I got it back in my toilet roll buying days and thought I needed it for WFH so got 500mb package.

Turns out my company vpn throttles to 20mb anyway so almost entirely pointless! 🙂

Saying that, we've since decided to grow a child to consume the remaining bandwidth/money/time/black hair so will soon be efficient!

We swapped from EE (~30mb down/~10mb up) to Gigaclear (~180mb down and up) last year. It's much better. I didn't use the single mesh node/router they provided as we already had a set of three nodes (TP link Deco S4). I just plugged the cable into one of the Deco nodes and it all just works. Not looking forward to the price increase next year when out contract ends.

Yes swapped decent copper broadband for the 300mbps package without nodes as already had mesh. Good deal for 18 month, but yes expect a price hike then (are they obligated to open up their cables to other providers at any point?)

Didn't become available to use/have installed until >12months after cable first laid.

Getting 270 down 300 up this morning with cabled pc into router. tbh it is overkill for my work requirements and only real time I've noticed it was downloading a film to an ipad recenty which was a wow moment.

Father in law is trying to start wwIII with his neighbour as their fibre was laid under a corner of his front garden without permission. I'm trying to get him to chill as it wasn't the neighbour and wasn't even gigaclear who did it as they subcontract the final connection jobs!

What do you people do with all that speed?

I've just about completed the whole internet!

EDIT: More seriously the bandwidth can suffer when streaming TV on a Sunday evening along with everyone else. At 500Mbs down we just about avoid any buffering. On BT's superfast 80Mbs offering some channels were unwatchable on a Sunday. For the avoidance of Wi-Fi discussions this is via a wired connection on both examples above and with QoS for TV enabled.

What do you people do with all that speed?

"Downloading Linux isos"

“Downloading Linux isos”

Is that what the cool kids are calling porn downloads nowadays? 🙂

That's a good point regarding opening up their lines to others.

I spoke with EE again today and while they can't offer fibre to the door at present in this area he did say they would expect to soon. That's what's happened elsewhere.

So common sense would say that once the lines are in then they could become open to all providers at some point.
The alternative would be each provider having to run cables to your door and that's insane.

Surely we have some telecoms experts on here... 🙂

My understanding is that if OpenReach (BT) run FTTP then other players (sky, zen, Plusnet etc) can use the cable.

However if another provider e.g. Virgin or Gigaclear run the cable they don't have to open it up to other people as they're not big enough.

OpenReach was spun off from BT years ago to ensure they didn't have a monopoly on infrastructure and the customer facing part.

We've just moved into a new build and the developer has their own ISP who have fibred up the development. Prices track BT so not too bad, but you can't change your ISP, you're locked into them. Only alternative is 4/5G but reception is mince here on O2 and Three. Think one of the kids has Vodafone and that seems to be ok.