Gigaclear Offers 5Gbps Broadband In Rural Areas

Gigaclear is to offer a 5Gbps service to its consumer and business customers early next year, allowing those in rural areas to access speeds previously exclusive to large firms in towns and cities.

The rural fibre to the premise (FTTP) network provider already offers speeds of up to 1Gbps and is trialling the ‘H5G’ service for home users and ‘B5G’ package for business customers with a ‘select’ group of users.

A wider rollout to all customers is expected to take place in early 2016, with the firm claiming the 5Gbps service is a response to increasing data use by British web users. H5G will cost £399 a month, while B5G is £1,500 a month not including VAT. Gigaclear says business users will have better support as a result.

Gigaclear 5Gbps

“We’re offering customers the chance to access absolutely phenomenal broadband speeds,” said Matthew Hare, CEO of Gigaclear. “To be clear, this is a premium service that gives the fastest internet speeds in the country to those of our customers who want the best connection that they can get – such as businesses and homeowners who require significant data transfer capabilities.

“But it won’t be long before there’s a greater need for a 5Gbps service as connectedness becomes an ever more important part of our everyday lives. By launching the trial of this 5Gbps service now, we are showing all our customers that we are delivering a future proof network today, one which won’t need to be updated even as their usage massively increased in the years to come.”

Gigclear has so far connected 10,000 properties to its FTTP networks, with forty percent of premises passed signing up got its services. The company operates or is building more than 50 separate FTTP networks across the UK in places like the Cotswolds and Epping Forest, and recently raised £30 million to continue its expansion. It claims the speeds offered provide a range of social and economic benefits without the need to give up the rural lifestyle.

Most of the UK’s fibre infrastructure is based on Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) technology, which uses copper for the final few metres of the connection. A number of operators, including CityFibre and Hyperoptic, offer FTTP connections, however these are mostly restricted to urban areas.

Virgin Media plans to expand its cable network to four million more properties as part of a £3 billion investment. However it is expected that the majority of locations earmarked for the rollout will either be in cities or places already served by BT.

The UK government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme aims to connect 95 percent of the UK population to superfast broadband by 2017, and has so far connected more than three million properties.

However BT is looking to boost speeds on its network using G.Fast technology cabaple of delivering 500Mbps and is also looking at rolling out FTTP in some areas.

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