Broadband for Appleton & Eaton

Appleton Broadband website

Welcome to this website! In the early stages of the marketing of an Ultrafast Broadband, the Appleton with Eaton Broadband Group decided that an interactive website was required! Although we are now connected we have left this website available for you to scroll through the menus and hope most of the questions you might be having are answered somewhere!

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…

We are connected to Ultrafast Broadband!

October 2012 and the 120 households required by Gigaclear to connect to their Ultrafast Broadband, were connected. The laying of the main cable from Frilford to Gigaclear’s cabinet in Appleton, and the connections to households, was completed with about half selecting to deploy the “self install” option and the others using Boxcom to lay the cable from the Toby box, drill into the house, set up the router and connect any devices required.

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.