Gigaclear was a selected partner of Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) to provide high capacity full-fibre broadband to rural areas of the South West. This is a part of the Government’s programme to vastly increase broadband capacity to rural areas. The network is exclusively installed underground and follows routes along roads as well as through farmland and woodland. The programme is governed by strict deadlines and switch-on dates. Hard-dig solutions in the highway can cost as much as 5 times as soft-dig solutions so the financial pressure to achieve private wayleaves with landowners was intense for the client. By means of swiftly identifying landowners and contacting them to explain the requirement and negotiate both routes and payments we were able to successfully agree a very high number of agreements, often across very intricate and varying routes. The project required close collaboration with the client’s project planning and design teams as well as with a diverse mixture of landowners, their tenants and other interested bodies. Areas covered included stretches of protected and sensitive land as well as many rivers, ditches, field drainage systems and valleys.
