Anyone with Gigaclear?

GuruJockStrap · 22 Mar 2023 at 13:08

I'm rural based and this ISP is available.

I will be out of contract with BT, who I will then be paying £30 monthly for 50Mb.

Gigaclear are offering 500Mb for £25 for 18 months, which is a substantial bandwidth uplift for less.

They apparently use 3rd party contractors to perform the fibre installation and I have read some horror stories, so clearly won't cancel BT until new service is up and running.

Would be good to hear if anyone has any feedback of their actual network performance, especially latency and speeds during peak times.

Jamauk · 26 Mar 2023 at 16:28

I'm quite impressed with them. I had a few issues getting it installed as apparently due to the length of the driveway it was classed as a specialist install, I only found this out after several poor excuses from various phone jockeys ranging from a previous install taking too long, bad traffic and one saying that the van had broken down, none of them could answer when I asked them why they didn't try and call to at least let me know.

I have recently had a few outages in the last month, lasting around 8-12 hours at a time which have been across the Oxfordshire area, they were quick to let me know via text and/or email, these were apparently due to a 3rd party contractor damaging one of their cabinets. I can't really say how much truth there is with that though. It has however been a great, reliable service for six months. My contract is £0.00 for six months cancel any time, then £49 per month on an 18 month contract, they do seem very keen to offer good deals. I'm on the 900/900Mb/Sec option, this often gets speeds of 930+ on SpeedTest, pings of around 8ms.

It is a great service people do seem to complain a lot about the customer service, however I have found that if you know what you are talking about they are great. I've seen a few posts on my local Facebook group where people are saying how they are on the 900/900 connection, however barely get half that, after picking through the finer details it becomes apparent that this is over Wi-Fi, it is also not apparent what hardware they are using to test with. The Linksys router they provide is far from ideal, essentially offering a Wi-Fi connection and one eithernet port, this went straight back in the box and I connected the modem to a USG Pro-4.

I waited until it was installed before cancelling NowTV, which gave me one month running the two side-by-side, WAN1 & 2.

ttaskmaster · 27 Mar 2023 at 16:33

Ours took ages to get installed, partly because the BT exchange they had to go through was utterly *****, like most of the kit round our way. Installation was quick, clean and only took a couple of hours. Placement was discussed with me beforehand and we were copied in on all documentation, site photos etc.
Once in, it was full speed 900+ up and down and has been ever since.
They occasionally warn us about forthcoming outages several weeks ahead, but I never notice any actual downtime.

Costs will rise once you're out of contract, though you may be able to negotiate.

Rroff · 28 Mar 2023 at 10:38

They are coming here soon - I have a few concerns - those who have already got the service don't seem very positive as to customer service or reliability, though say it is great when it works, there is also big questions as to the prices once out of the initial contract - which seem to basically double and some people apparently seeing more than double to keep their existing package.

On the other hand I've had a bit of dealing with them as they need a way leave agreement for our land to be able to connect up the next couple of villages here and I also went to an event they did locally and the people involved were very good and knowledgeable and able to show me a lot of information about the network, etc.

GuruJockStrap · 30 Mar 2023 at 08:51

Took the plunge and ordered shortly after posting. Earliest install date was back end of April though!

Jenz · 23 May 2023 at 11:43

GuruJockStrap said:
Took the plunge and ordered shortly after posting. Earliest install date was back end of April though!

Would you comment on how you are finding it? I have them installing for me on 5th June. Live in the sticks and have been surviving on sub-20MB 4g !

Jamauk · 23 May 2023 at 14:37

I've had it since October on the 6 month free trial deal, this didn't go quite as planned as this wasn't applied to my account and I was charged £49 for the first month, they were quite happy to correct this though and asked if I would like it refunded or just restart the 6 month trial, I chose to just restart the 6 month trial at the end of that months pay period, it all worked out the same really, that £49 would have been paid to them at some point.

There have been a few major outages, impacting on the whole region. These lasted around 1-2 days. I'm on the 900Mb/Sec service, ping times are around 7ms and speedtest gets around 930Mb/Sec up/down.

Recently there were 4 people disconnected in my street after Openreach cut through the cables doing their own install. This took 7 days for the service to be restored, after it took them 4 days for them to actually come and identify the fault, two days to find the fault and finally on the 7th day for them to fix it. After repeatedly complaining to them and pointing out that there are services I pay for such as Amazon, Netflix and Sky which I have not been able to use, along with their own service which I pay for I received 3 months free on my account. I'm happy with it now, I have however pointed out that if anything like that happens again for that length of time I will be cancelling.

Jamauk · 23 May 2023 at 14:47

I forgot to add, the install didn't quite go as planned. The first scheduled date they didn't turn up and I had to wait 2 weeks for the installers to actually do a site survey and the next day to do the install.

The day that they didn't turn up, when I complained to them earlier that day and received several random excuses from different people at Gigaclear, these were that another install had taken longer than planned, the van had broken down, one of the installers was unwell and had to go home. I contacted them several times that day as the install was scheduled between 08:00-17:00, I was concerned as it got later in the day as to where they were.

Finally the excuse I now believe to be true is that due to the length of the drive it required a specialist installation team with specialist equipment. Quite why though if they had seen that due to the length of the drive would need this specialist team they could not have called to let me know that the install wouldn't happen that day I don't know.

GuruJockStrap · 23 May 2023 at 18:56

Jenz said:
Would you comment on how you are finding it? I have them installing for me on 5th June. Live in the sticks and have been surviving on sub-20MB 4g !

Engineers turned up to install service on day stated. Unfortunately, some engineers were out the day before doing some precursory work and failed to do what they needed to do, so my service didn't go live until the following day when another engineer came out.

Service was running fine for a week and then I suddenly lost all internet connectivity. That happened on 09/05/2023.

My connection was fully restored on 18/05/2023. Issue was due to another contractor who had access to ducting from distribution point on my street and damaging my cable from the distribution point to my property.

I'm on the 500Mb service and when wired, getting 7ms pings and maxing out the down/upload.

Thankfully, my BT service wasn't due to be disconnected until 26/05/2023, so I wasn't without internet access.

My advice would be to get Gigaclear up, running and live then cancel your existing broadband service.

Jenz · 23 May 2023 at 18:58

Thanks that’s exactly what I intend to do.

Prototype321 · 3 Jun 2023 at 10:54

We move into our new house on Wednesday and have our connection with Gigaclear booked in for Thursday, let's see how it goes

500mbit here I come?

Namsnik · 16 Jul 2023 at 13:58

My Gigaclear install booked for Wednesday - first 6 months free, free standard install.
Standard underground install is clearly possible but Gigaclear are set on on overhead install for my road
Overhead install is going to understandably upset good neighbours whose garden it will cross, but I think it will be a little more than 3m above ground level ( the minimum identified in the legislation). So I don’t think my neighbour or I can do anything to persuade them to use the underground option .
Customer support during pre-install stage has been fairly poor. But it is post install that really matters, and indeed I hope I will rarely need it!

KIA · 16 Jul 2023 at 18:50

Prototype321 said:
We move into our new house on Wednesday and have our connection with Gigaclear booked in for Thursday, let's see how it goes 500mbit here I come?

How did it go?

BUDFORCE · 16 Jul 2023 at 21:14

They are putting in gigaclear around here, I live in a small village but openreach did put proper FTTP in our village about a year ago and switched over from 70meg FTTC.

But I reckon openreach only did some of the village or I'm not quite sure but they have been digging up the footpaths in some quite random places, doesn't seem logical to me but whatever. Seems like a lot of cost as well, but guess they must think they'll make it back.

Anyway I have no reason to change as my 500meg FTTP is via Zen on a pretty cracking lifetime deal they sorted for me for being with them for so long.

Scott C · 5 Aug 2023 at 21:02

@GuruJockStrap How are you getting on with Gigaclear? I’m hoping to get mine installed in Wednesday

GuruJockStrap · 5 Aug 2023 at 22:32

Scott C said:
@GuruJockStrap How are you getting on with Gigaclear? I’m hoping to get mine installed in Wednesday

No complaints since the initial issues following installation. Just don't go cancelling your existing broadband service until everything is all 8nstalled and hunky dory.

sx_turbo · 7 Aug 2023 at 22:03

Gigaclear have just become live down my street, and it's great timing as my nowtv deal has just ended and payments have gone up to £40 for 35mbs downloads.

I've got a couple of concerns, will they locate the new connection in the same.place as my existing BT line? Currently on an internal wall where my TV is.

The router, only seems.to have 1 port, is this one ethernet port I can plug an ethernet switch in, or is this 1 port the fibre connection line?

KIA · 8 Aug 2023 at 16:29

sx_turbo said:
I've got a couple of concerns, will they locate the new connection in the same.place as my existing BT line? Currently on an internal wall where my TV is.

More than likely.

sx_turbo said:
The router, only seems.to have 1 port, is this one ethernet port I can plug an ethernet switch in, or is this 1 port the fibre connection line?

2x WAN/LAN auto-sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports

You can connect a switch to the spare port.

sx_turbo · 8 Aug 2023 at 18:47

KIA said:
More than likely.

2x WAN/LAN auto-sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports

You can connect a switch to the spare port.

Thanks, I've pulled the plug and gone for it.

Booked for 8th September, I don't think it's going to be straight forward though as I don't have a connection outside my house, round the corner in the main road they've all got connections but the never went down the cul de sac im in, so we'll see.

Wonder if their hoping a few houses take them up on the offer in my road to make it worthwhile digging down.

Scott C · 9 Aug 2023 at 19:34

Scott C said:
@GuruJockStrap How are you getting on with Gigaclear? I’m hoping to get mine installed in Wednesday

Now up and running, very happy so far

For me this is as significant of a leap as when I went from 56k dial up to 512k Telewest cable…