If you are involved with a group considering Gigaclear and Ultrafast Broadband, there are one or two members of the Appleton with Eaton Broadband Group who are happy to supply information and attend meetings. Please email Appleton.website@gmail.com for further information.

In the meantime…

Gigaclear has placed a Toby box on the edge of all premises in Appleton and Eaton, whether or not the household has selected to sign up. This means that any household where there is no current connection to the house has the option, in future, to select Gigaclear.

What have we experienced?

The laying of the fibre optic cables was done quite tidily and the seed soon repaired the verges and pits where the cables and connections were laid. Where tarmac had been disturbed it has been well reinstated.

Broadband speeds have varied considerably from over 900Mbps download and upload to 10Mbps; this variation is often due to the age of the PC or device connected to the system. Generally speaking; the newer the equipment the faster the speed.  The highest speeds are when a new desktop PC is wired to the router. Yes; the system is symmetric!

Obvious to state to the techies: wired devices will be faster than wireless! And without boosters, the further away from the router the slower the wireless speeds. A major “lesson” learned is the positioning of the router is key – keep clear of metal objects and site the router high enough to ensure a clear wireless signal.

The extra speeds allows households to multi-use – from a Broadband enabled TV, to a Smartphone, an Android, a tablet … all can be used simultaneously. Wet weather is not longer a problem. We do not see speeds vary enormously when the kids come home from school.

February 2013 Update! There are now 141 households connected. The experience of the system has, in the main, been excellent with only one major outage very early on which did last a day but only the occasional and very short outage since.

The hikes, which take effect on 5 January 2013, will be the fourth set of rises the telecoms giant has implemented in just over two years. They come just as households will be counting costs due to the start of energy price rises.

How to escape your contract

Under BT terms and conditions, as a price rise is considered to be to your “detriment”, you have 10 days from receiving notice of a price rise to terminate your contract without incurring an early termination fee.

BT’s terms state: “If British Telecom Payment Services makes a change to your material disadvantage, you may terminate your BT Telephony Services, BT Total Broadband or BT Vision agreement.

“Contact us directly within 10 calendar days of receiving our price change notification you may cease your services without penalty.”

BT says customers will be notified of the price changes in the BT Update magazine sent with bills in September, October and December. If you have an online account, you’ll be emailed in September or October.

Read more about this on the Money Saving Expert website – BT and price increases: January 2013.

We appreciate that whilst working in the highways we are causing inconvenience but our contractors try very hard to keep this to a minimum, and we thank you all for your continued patience and support whilst the works continue.

It is obvious to us that many residents are getting very excited about the incoming service and many have asked when their area will be served and when they will be switched on.

It is very hard to be accurate with a forecast as until you dig up a footway or road you truly do not know what you may find but in order to keep you updated here is an outline plan of what happens next:

1. The first objective is to get the cabinet (which is sited at the Appleton Tennis Club in Badswell Lane) connected to our backhaul so the equipment can be set up and proven ready for our demonstrations to you all in the village hall on the 8th September. Virtually all the backhaul cable is now laid with the last stretch down the south side of Netherton Road being laid this week along with its associated drops.
2. You will probably have noticed that although we have been reinstating the runs there are pits around the village which have not been filled in. The splicing team who join the fibre optic cables together are making their way round to all of these to make the necessary connections and once the joints are tested they will be filled in and reinstated.
3. Works completed: Cabinet and chamber build at the Appleton Tennis Club, Abingdon Rd Tubney, Southby Close, Whites Forge, Park Lane, Doctors Lane, Link between Besselsleigh and Eaton, Link between Eaton and Appleton, Link between Appleton and Fyfield, Netherton Road South section
4. Still to go (in approximate order of build): Link between Fyfield and Tubney, Netherton Road North section, Oaksmere, Fettiplace Close, Horseshoe Close, Eaton Road, Badwells Lane, Town Furlong, Eaton Village, Besselsleigh Village
5. Subscribers who have had their CCP (Customer Connection Point) installed will start to be made live from the 2nd week of September.
6. At this point we will start shipping the self install kits to those households that have requested them. Please remember you have 3 choices for installation, please confirm your selection as soon as possible for those that have not done so already:
   1. Self Installation – please let me know what length of fibre cable you need to connect from your connection point to the location of your router in your property (e.g. 10, 25 or 50M)
   2. Local Electrician/Handyman e.g. James Mansfield – please let me know the length of fibre cable you need as above
   3. Boxcom Installation – their special offer for Appleton/Eaton residents of an installation for £85* for lengths of 25m will expire at the end of September – please let me know as soon as possible if you wish to use Boxcom.

I am pleased to confirm that we have had some very positive comments on the quality of the reinstatement of both grass and tarmac areas which is very pleasing and a credit to MKJ who are our main civils contractor on this project.

Apologies:

We would like to apologise to the residents of Fettiplace Close who we marked up and signposted 2 weeks ago, we realised a flaw in our plan and have been forced to put you back in the sequence, there were sound reasons and we will have you online soon.

*Please refer to the Boxcom Website for details of their special installation offer – http://www.boxcomngn.net/home-installation-service

Finally: please do come along to the Appleton Village Hall on Saturday 8th September 2012 when between 10:00am and 1:30pm Gigaclear will be demonstrating how to get the best from the ultrafast Broadband you will soon enjoy!

This will mean the digging of trenches in soft verges and taking up small sections of asphalt and concrete. Gigaclear and their contractors will advise households when they plan to undertake the work in their street/ road and request vehicles are not left parked on the verge or even beside the verge: equipment will, for example, have to progress along a pavement to drill a trench.

The main parish Gigaclear cabinet will be located in the Tennis Club car park – therefore the first signs of activity will be in Town Furlong and Badswell Lane. The contractor’s site office will be located in the Gow’s Christmas Barn car park along the Eaton Road and next to Hengrove House. The two main contractors are MKJ and TF Trenching.

Subject to the ground and weather conditions it is anticipated this work will be completed by mid September 2012.

If there are any issues anyone wishes to raise about the trenching work please phone Project Manager, Ian Wakefield on 01865 591102. If there are any questions about the fibre optic connections and Superfast Broadband please call Joe Frost of Gigaclear on 07887 955093 or email him on joe.frost@gigaclear.com or visit www.gigaclear.com.

Gigaclear’s service is delivered over a 1000 Mbps fibre connection. The standard service has a minimum of 10 Mbps reserved across the network for each customer, with the ability to burst up to 1000 Mbps on demand on a contended basis with other members of the community. This standard service costs £37 per month with a connection fee of £100 and a typical installation charge of £85, all including VAT.

Gigaclear has been working with Appleton Broadband Group and Appleton & Eaton Parish Council to reach the community. At the well attended village meeting in April, the overwhelming majority present showed their support for Gigaclear as a solution to their need for fast reliable Internet. In the following weeks at a series of local events, the community signed up to take the service. With 120 now committed, construction of the new buried fibre network will begin in July, with the first customers connected to their new Gigaclear Ultrafast Internet service in August.

“18 months ago the community developed an action plan that prioritised keeping our bus service, building a new playground and getting a decent Internet service. We have been researching for some time how to obtain fast and reliable broadband access for the whole community and the service that Gigaclear will deliver exceeds our expectations in terms of speed and future proofing” said David Hine of Appleton Broadband Group. He added “we are very excited about this service as for the first time ever we will have broadband that will be the envy of major cities, allowing local businesses and people working from home to perform as if they were city- or office-based and local residents will have access to a whole new world of entertainment, communication and education.”

Gigaclear supplies the fibre to the property and Internet access. A constellation of “Over the Top” applications and services meets the customer’s needs for telephony (e.g. Voipfone, Vonage, Skype, Google Talk), entertainment (e.g. LoveFilm, iPlayer, Blinkbox, Netflix, Roku) and all the other uses that you can make of a modern high speed communications connection for work, education, communication and play. Been approached by over 60 communities to explore whether they could receive a similar service.

• Up to 25m total install distance
• Including up to 3m of hard surface (asphalt, concrete etc) cutting
• Including up to 3m run inside as long as same room as entry point
• Connection and initialisation of the Gigaclear router
• Full test to prove the Gigaclear service is working

Additional distance inside or outside the house can be installed for £2.50 per metre including VAT.

We’re holding another one at The Eight Bells Eaton on Tuesday 8th May between 6.30 and 8.30pm. Do come along if you still have any doubts or queries.

Cost still seems to be villagers biggest issue – the key point to make clear is this: you don’t pay £37 monthly on top of all you currently pay. Gigaclear is the basic ISP, so you can subtract the cost of your current ISP (£12-£15 for most people) and then sign up for a free mail service. Then start looking at where you can save on telephone by using a Voice Over Internet (VOIP) service. See VOIP Explained.  So you aren’t adding £37 extra to your monthly bills. Some people can even save. And for that you get a superfast Broadband service that will be light years ahead of the rickety old copper-cable service we have now.

Let’s seize this chance to modernise Appleton’s communications! It won’t come round again for quite a while if we don’t. Spare forms in the shop – leave them there with your cheque or send them back to Gigaclear.

Many hands went up, but this number doesn’t reflect the amount of orders we’ve received to date.

Please come to The Plough on Monday 30th April between 7 and 8.30pm to hand in your order form and deposit. Alternatively you can drop your order form and deposit into the Fortnum and Mason wooden champagne box that you’ll find on the counter in the Appleton Village Shop (image of the box on the right).

We need to show how committed we are to the Gigaclear proposal by the 30th April!

Most of these services will allow villagers to save money. The most exciting of these is VOIP (Voice over Internet).

Find out more about VOIP and how it can save you money.