Gigaclear Trials the UK's First 5Gbps Ultrafast Broadband Service for Home Owners and Businesses

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Gigaclear

17 Nov, 2015, 06:00 GMT

LONDON, November 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Ultrafast pure fibre broadband provider, Gigaclear, has launched Britain's fastest internet package for retail customers with up to 5Gbps broadband speeds. The H5G and B5G services, for home and business customers, offer download speeds up to 200 times faster and upload speeds 1,000 times faster than the UK average [1]. Up until now only the UK's largest organisations have been able to have such speeds.

Available to customers from early 2016 through Gigaclear's existing fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network, the ultrafast service significantly reduces the time taken to upload and download large files. For example, to download a 1,500MB video can take up to eight minutes on an average UK broadband service. This improves to two minutes on Gigaclear's 100Mbps service, but will take between just four and six seconds with the new 5Gbps package.

Matthew Hare, Chief Executive at Gigaclear, said: "We're offering customers the chance to access absolutely phenomenal broadband speeds. To be clear, this is a premium service that gives the fastest Internet speeds in the country to those of our customers who want the best connection that they can get. But it won't be long before there's a greater need for a 5Gbps service as connectedness becomes an ever more important part of our everyday lives. By launching the trial of this 5Gbps service now, we are showing all our customers that we are delivering a future proof network today, one which won't need to be updated even as their usage massively increases in the years to come."

All the signs are that UK consumers will need this level of service soon. Internet usage in the UK has increased fivefold over the past five years and is predicted to increase threefold over the coming five years, according to research from the Cisco Visual Networking Index™. Internet traffic is expected to grow by 23 per cent each year until 2019[2]

Matthew Hare continued: "By 2019 Cisco estimate that there will be three-times as many online devices on the planet as there are humans!  People will need significant bandwidth to live and work the way they want. The beauty of our approach is that the pure fibre we are putting into the ground today will support that future. Any Gigaclear customer will be able to access this service without having to change a thing other than the electronics at the end of the fibre."

The H5G and B5G packages are now in trial with a selection of Gigaclear customers and will be available to all Gigaclear customers from early 2016.

For homeowners, the H5G package is expected to cost £399 per month including VAT. The business package costs £1,500 per month excluding VAT, with the B5G package offering lower contention rates, a higher service package and premium support.

For further information, visit http://www.gigaclear.com

Notes to editors: 

  1. Based on average broadband upload speeds of 2.9Mbps and download speeds of 22.8Mbps, reported by Ofcom: UK fixed-line broadband performance, November 2014 - The performance of fixed-line broadband provided to UK residential consumers, published 26th February 2015.
  2. Research taken from the Cisco Visual Networking Index™: Forecast and Methodology, 2015 -2019 White Paper, May 2015.