Superfast Broadband via Fibre-to-the-Property (FTP) has been live in Elkstone for nearly 3 years now, and the ‘teething’ stages are long gone, so anyone who has not yet enrolled for service can do so with confidence. There are many “best fibre provider in your area” search sites that suggest that FTP in this area is not available, this is not the case – the reason they say it’s not available is that they only poll the availability of Fibre to the local British Telecom telephone exchange (Coberley), which has no fibre connection. For whatever reason, they do not include direct connection providers such as GigaClear who put all the necessary underground infrastructure to get Fibre to all properties in the village.
Connection subscriptions currently offered by GigaClear are 30, 300, and 900 Mbps. The Fibre-to-the-Property technology is very reliable, but do note that these speeds are achieved at the router under ‘ideal’ conditions, specifically where only one PC is connected via cable directly to the router, and that no other device is connected to it.
Bear in mind also that testing via WiFi is completely unrealistic as the data transfer rate is necessarily slowed down by wireless encryption / decryption and also by signal reduction through walls etc which can give a significantly lower speed indication than is really the case – so don’t become agitated if your smart phone reports a lower speed, it’s almost certainly working at its maximum!
Suffice to say that the available range of speed choices for this service can ensure that the needs of every household from occasional email users up to several quite serious game players are easily accommodated.
As mentioned above, BT do not provide Superfast speeds through telephone land-lines, it is still copper to the local cabinet, so expect 4 – 8 Mbps through an ADSL router, depending how far you are from it. The cabinet is situated at the north end of the village, just at the top of Bubbs Hill.
If you want to enroll for superfast broadband, simply click The Gigaclear Postcode Checker page. Enter your postcode, and a drop-down list of properties appears – pick your own, and follow the screens and prompts to order your service, set up connection and payment arrangements etc. Note that subscriptions are available from Gigaclear directly, or through a number of different retail providers, whose tariffs may suit your requirements better.
As each connection is activated, an email will be sent to the subscriber using the address provided on the enrollment page.
Below are some FAQ answers to the more common questions arising (just click on the + sign to see the answers) and there’s an online form at the foot of the page so that you can submit further queries and comments.
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