The Appleton and Eaton fibre network completed, more communities to cover

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thinkbroadband :: Gigaclear announces completion of its Appleton and Eaton fibre network

Previous coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Gigabit broadband now in Appleton, Oxfordshire

Two large Oxfordshire villages now to have fibre-optic broadband

From the horse’s mouth

Gigaclear press release

Gigaclear Web site – Appleton service

My Comments

After three months of hard work, the fibre-to-the-premises gigabit broadband rollout has been completed in Appleton and Eaton in Oxfordshire. This has passed 400 properties with 40% service take-up at the time of writing.

As previously mentioned in the coverage, this service is intended to be a symmetric network with equal bandwidth for upload and download. This feature will make it work well for telecommuters, Skype users and small businesses who synchronise data between home and the shopfront.

There is a desire by Gigaclear to cover more Oxfordshire rural communities. One of these is Watlington where the Watlington Community Broadband service wants to move from ADSL2 copper technology to the newer FTTP all-fibre-optic technology.  Anna Badcock who is representing Watlington on Oxfordshire District Council and formed Watlington Community Broadband with county councillor Caroline Newton is behind this concept as a service improvement effort.

Through the construction phase for this network, Gigaclear have hosted many demonstrations of what this technology can do. This included use of the smart-TVs’ Internet-enabled capabilities, VoIP-based telephony including the ability to retain one’s own number and handset, video telephony amongst others.

What is being emphasised here is the concept of a rural lifestyle but being able to still benefit from real broadband Internet. This concept underscores professionals working from home in a lot of the country villages and towns through country-based businesses being as competitive as city-based ones to country-based hotels and similar businesses offering Wi-Fi to attract the city-based business traffic.

A question still worth raising regarding these FTTP broadband rollouts that Gigaclear are undertaking is whether the farms, manors, and similar large properties on the outskirts of the villages are being given the option to have this broadband service delivered to them. The question that will often be raised by the owners of these properties is how much it would cost to roll out the fibre-optic infrastructure to the main building.

As we see more of these developments taking place around rural UK courtesy of Gigaclear and others, it could be a chance to prove that real broadband Internet, especially next-generation Internet can be a reality in the country.

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