Gigaclear activity in the area

Just an update post, nothing concrete happening on the ground in Wansford but it's interesting to see that Gigaclear are pitching an up to 1 Gbit/s "fibre to the home" service in Kingscliffe and Apethorpe.

As the Northants BDUK project didn't propose an upgrade for that area, and unlike Wansford they have only BT's first generation 8M broadband with no Talk Talk or Sky equipment, the area should be an attractive market.

Gigaclear work on the basis of getting 30 or 40% of a population signed up before the project starts, to give them a viable project. They are also pitching in villages around Peterborough where they will use a connection to the Peterborough Core fibre project for their onward connection to the internet.

The Kingscliffe project may well get its fibre feed from Wansford where there is a fibre interconnect in the telephone exchange.


At the time of writing Kingscliffe has just over 40% of the required commitments to Gigaclear.

Possible price reductions

OFCOM have announced a price cap on the charges BT Wholesale can make to retail ISPs on Market 1 exchanges like Wansford. The cap applies to a product called "IPStream Connect" which is currently used by six ISPs - BT, Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin, Orange and Entanet.

The price cap should reduce wholesale costs by about 11% below inflation but whether we see that as lower retail prices, more capacity for peak times or more profit for the ISPs remains to be seen.

An unintended consequence is that lower prices from BT Wholesale make it less attractive for other providers to install equipment. Talk Talk for example said this measure would reduce their expansion plans. On the other hand it may create an incentive for BT to introduce faster ADSL2+ services which are free of this price cap.