Rural fibre broadband provider Gigaclear is looking to bring gigabit services to villages in the Welland Valley, East Midlands.
Gigaclear’s mini rural networks provide download and upload speeds of up to 1Gbps (1,000Mbps) exclusively to homes and businesses in remote rural areas.
After delivering gigabit broadband to nearby Rutland, news of the quality of Gigaclear’s services spread via word of mouth.
In order to assess exactly where the demand is, Gigaclear is inviting residents from the Valley area, on the Northamptonshire-Leicestershire border, to register their interest.
Chief executive of Gigaclear Matthew Hare said: “With new pure fibre networks currently in build “next door” in Rutland and Northamptonshire, we have had a large number of registrations from the Welland Valley.
“That’s why we’re happy to support the communities from the Welland Valley to link up, speak out and take action against slow broadband connections. We want to accelerate these families and burgeoning businesses to Gigabit speeds.”
Gigaclear is inviting residents from Blaston, Bringhurst, Cranoe, Drayton, Hallaton, Horninghold, Medbourne, Nevill Holt, Slawston, Ashley, Brampton Ash, Dingley, Stoke Albany, Sutton Bassett and Weston by Welland to pledge interest before it commits to setting up a fibre network.
The fibre ISP specialises in creating small networks that connect a few hundred properties to FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) broadband. Gigaclear only reaches out to rural communities that aren’t due to be connected to superfast broadband under a local BDUK (Broadband Delivery for the UK) scheme.
Gigaclear’s broadband services start at £37/month for a symmetrical 50Mbps service plus a on-off installation charge of £100. While it’s more expensive than your average broadband service, you’re paying for access to a network capable of providing bandwidth well in excess of what’s currently possible from Openreach FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) and Virgin Media cable connections.
Right now, if a Gigaclear network comes to your neck of the woods you can only buy broadband services from Gigaclear. In the future, it’s expected that you’ll be able to get broadband services from a range of ISPs on a Gigaclear network, but it’s not clear when exactly this will happen.
Gigaclear currently runs nine rural networks and is currently building another 10. Facing overwhelming demand from rural communities, Gigaclear is planning to raise cash on the AIM stock exchange with the intention of using cash to bring services to 200,000 customers over the next few years.
Main image: Flickr user Mike McSharry licenced under CC BY 2.0
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