Looking at joining Gigaclear Broadband?
In this article, we’ve reviewed Gigaclear, based on their speeds, customer service, Wi-Fi router, value for money, and more, to see if they’re worth joining.
Let’s get started.
Contents
- Gigaclear overview
- Coverage
- Speeds
- Wi-Fi router
- Phone packages
- Getting started with Gigaclear
- Customer service
- Value for money
- Verdict: should you join Gigaclear?
Gigaclear overview
Gigaclear is an independent full fibre broadband provider with coverage in large parts of southern England, especially the Cotswolds, and counties surrounding Greater London.
They operate their own fibre broadband network, completely separate from the Openreach, City Fibre, or Virgin Media networks used by most other providers.
Gigaclear is heavily focused on offering fast, full fibre broadband. They don’t offer much in the way of extras or other benefits, like cable TV add-ons, or free gifts with their plans.
However, Gigaclear does offer home phone calling packages, which we’ve looked at later in this review.
Currently, you have to commit to an 18 month contract to get Gigaclear Broadband.
Coverage
Unlike the Openreach broadband network used by BT, Sky, Plusnet, and most other major providers, Gigaclear’s broadband network is only available in certain areas of southern England, such as:
- Surrey
- Berkshire
- Buckinghamshire
- Hertfordshire
- Essex
- Kent
If you live in one of these counties, it’s not guaranteed that Gigaclear is available – these are just the places it’s most likely you’ll get service.
Gigaclear has large areas of coverage around Bristol, Oxford, Reading, Gloucester, Milton Keynes, and Northampton, as well as in a strip going out from London in a northeasterly direction, up towards Colchester.
You can also get Gigaclear Broadband in some postcodes near Plymouth and Exeter.
Go to the Gigaclear website to see if you can get their broadband service at your address.
Speeds
Gigaclear’s download and upload speeds are very fast, offering more than enough bandwidth for most households.
Currently, you can get a plan with a download speed of 200, 500, or 900 Mbps.
Each of Gigaclear’s broadband plans comes with symmetrical downloads and uploads, meaning your upload speeds are the same as your download speeds.
This isn’t the case with most other providers – it’s pretty common to only get an upload speed about 20% as fast as your download speed with the likes of BT and Sky.
However, when it comes to download speeds, while Gigaclear is fast, they’re not the fastest provider on the market.
Virgin Media offers download speeds of up to 1,130 Mbps in most areas, or up to 2 Gbps in some locations. And you can also get 1.6 Gbps with EE Broadband in some Openreach full fibre areas at the moment.
Wi-Fi router
Gigaclear currently sends a Linksys Velop router to new customers.
This router is quite a good bit of kit. It comes with WiFi 6, rather than the older WiFi 5 standard still seen on some other providers’ routers, such as BT and Plusnet.
WiFi 6 gives you better WiFi signal, especially at long distances, as well as faster speeds. Gigaclear’s router offers really strong WiFi – plenty for most small to medium sized houses and flats.
On their fastest plan, Gigaclear sends you an upgraded tri-band WiFi router, which gives you even better signal using an extra 5 Ghz wireless communication channel.
The downside to these Linksys routers is they only come with three gigabit Ethernet ports, rather than four. This means you’ll only be able to plug in three devices to the router at once, unless you buy a switch to help you get more ports.
If you have a large house, you can also choose to include one of two mesh WiFi extender packages from Gigaclear:
- Smart WiFi gives you one extra node you can place elsewhere in the house.
- Smart WiFi Plus gives you two extra nodes you can use to get better signal, even if you have five bedrooms or more.
These WiFi extenders come with an extra monthly cost, but Smart WiFi is often included for new Gigaclear Broadband customers, depending on the package you buy.
Phone packages
Unlike with some other altnets, it’s possible to bundle a landline phone package when you buy Gigaclear fibre broadband.
Similar to how it works with major broadband and phone providers like Sky and Virgin Media, you can choose to add one of the following inclusive minutes bundles to your Gigaclear broadband plan:
- Evening and weekends – unlimited calls to UK landlines from 7pm to 7am, and all day on weekends.
- Evening and weekends PLUS – unlimited calls to UK landlines and mobiles from 7pm to 7am, and all day on weekends.
- Anytime – unlimited calls to UK landlines and mobiles any day, any time
These plans are very reasonably priced when compared to inclusive minutes bundles from the likes of Sky and BT.
Plus, you can get any of these inclusive minutes packs from Gigaclear on a rolling monthly basis. You don’t need to commit for 18 months like you do with the broadband aspect of your service.
View Gigaclear’s broadband and phone page to learn more.
Getting started with Gigaclear
Since Gigaclear operates a completely separate network from all other broadband providers, they’ll need to send out an engineer to help you get set up.
Generally, this is a pretty quick and easy process, but it’s a bit more involved than switching between Openreach providers (from BT to Sky for example).
Once you place an order on the Gigaclear website, here’s what happens.
- Gigaclear will send an engineer over to perform external pre-installation work. You don’t need to be home for this. They’ll need to check that everything is ready to get online, and do a bit of work with cabling, ready for the installation day.
- Gigaclear will send out an engineer to get you online. You’ll need to be home on the day – they’ll finish off installing your connection, and set up your router for you.
Typically, you can book in the activation visit (the second part of the work described above) within 14 days of placing your order online.
Normally, you’ll be able to get online in about two to three weeks after buying, giving you plenty of opportunity to give a month’s notice to your old provider if needed.
Customer service
Gigaclear tends to offer pretty good customer service.
Some customers have run into issues during the setup process, but this is sort of to be expected, given getting started is a bit more complicated than with some other providers.
Despite this, most installations go smoothly, and Gigaclear don’t have any issues with missed appointments, like Virgin Media does.
Once you get up and running, Gigaclear offers fast, consistent service. And their UK-based support team is helpful if you ever run into issues.
Value for money
One of Gigaclear’s biggest strengths is their value for money.
On a cost per megabit basis, they’re often one of the cheapest providers in the UK. In fact, their 200 Mbps plan is often cheaper than the slowest 37 or 74 Mbps plans available from providers like BT, NOW Broadband, or Plusnet.
Gigaclear Ultrafast, which offers 500 Mbps, is normally also excellent value for money. Also, unlike some other fibre broadband providers, Gigaclear doesn’t charge a setup fee, most of the time.
For some reason though, Gigaclear’s Hyperfast 900 Mbps plan is often more than twice as expensive as their 500 Mbps plan – it’s more in line with the cost of a 900 Mbps plan from a provider like BT or Hyperoptic.
Overall though, Gigaclear is nearly always one of the cheapest broadband providers on the market, especially when you compare the monthly costs of the 200 and 500 Mbps plans to similar deals from other providers.
Verdict: should you join Gigaclear?
Overall, we rate Gigaclear 4.5 out of 5.
If it’s available in your area, Gigaclear Broadband is definitely worth considering.
They offer cheap, fast broadband, with a good WiFi router, and helpful customer service.
Although installing Gigaclear and getting online is a bit involved, once you get up and running, they offer fast, consistent broadband service.
We just wish their WiFi router had more Ethernet ports, and that their 900 Mbps plan wasn’t so expensive compared to the 500 Mbps deal. However, their fastest plan still offers good value, compared to other 900 Mbps or 1 Gbps plans on offer from other providers.
Visit the Gigaclear website to see if you can get their service at your address, and to find out what their prices are like at the moment.
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About the author
Tyler is the co-founder of Broadband Savvy. He has been helping people improve their broadband connectivity since 2018 by writing about fibre broadband and mobile broadband providers, as well as creating tutorials to help people improve their broadband speeds and Wi-Fi signal.
Tyler is responsible for the majority of buyer’s guides and broadband reviews published on Broadband Savvy. He has a wealth of experience testing and reviewing different broadband tariffs, including fibre internet plans, as well as 4G and 5G broadband deals. He is responsible for testing and evaluating Wi-Fi routers, performing speed and latency tests, and comparing the value for money of different broadband providers on the market in the UK.
Before co-founding Broadband Savvy, Tyler had a long history of tinkering with computers. He built his first PC at the age of 12, and since then, he’s become obsessed with all things networking and internet-related. He’s a massive gamer, loves Rocket League, and also plays Sunday League football.