Students and residents in and around Sevenoaks Prep School now have access to gigabit broadband thanks to installation by Gigaclear.
The company has completed the first leg of the Ultrafast Underriver project, which will eventually see thousands of properties across western Kent, including the fee-paying school, able to connect to download and upload speeds of up to 1Gbps (1,000Mbps).
To demonstrate the power of the new service, students were asked to stream multiple YouTube videos in the school’s ICT suite.
Alan Chant, head of ICT at the Sevenoaks Prep School said: “As an experiment we were able to run 50 concurrent YouTube videos when the Gigaclear service went live – most in HD – without a hiccup. More importantly our online learning applications now all load and run instantly so our pupils can get more from their lesson time.”
Gigaglear, an ISP which installs ultrafast FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) networks in mainly rural areas, began work on the Underriver project back in April. The project aims to cover around 2,300 properties and was hoped to be finished by the end of this summer.
The company plans to connect more properties in the coming months following this latest milestone.
Matthew Hare, chief executive of Gigaclear added: “We are on the verge of a revolution in the way we all learn, enabled by the Internet. At school, at work and at home, fast, symmetric broadband such as provided by Gigaclear will give us the opportunity to take advantage of new remote learning opportunities throughout our lives. Gigaclear is proud to be a part of this revolution.”
Gigaclear’s prices start from £37/month for a 50Mbps broadband service. All of Gigaclear’s products are symmetrical, meaning the maximum download and upload speeds are the same.
For those who want a bit more headroom it’ll cost you £42/month for 100Mbps, £49/month for 200Mbps and £69/month for the full gigabit both ways.
The company operates nine networks across the UK and recently announced plans to connect 5,000 properties in Northamptonshire. Looking to the future, Gigaclear wants to connect at least 200,000 customers and is looking to raise £180 million on the AIM (Alternative Investment Market) stock exchange to make this happen.
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