KCOM Rival Pure Broadband Expand in East Yorkshire with ISP Acquisition

The East Riding of Yorkshire (England) focused ISP Pure Broadband, which primarily operates a mix of fibre optic (FTTP) and fixed wireless (5GHz) based broadband networks for businesses and homes in the Hull area, has said they have “big plans” to expand after gobbling rival provider Relax Broadband.

At present Pure Broadband claims to be providing services to more than 10,000 premises (homes and businesses) in Hull and their turnover for the first 8 months of trading is said to have already exceeded £1m, although these details aren’t covered in their most recent accounts to the end of February 2018 (hopefully their next annual report will cover this).

Pure has in the past also signed a £500k agreement to make use of Cityfibre’s local fibre optic infrastructure (here) and outside of East Yorkshire they’re listed as one of the ISP suppliers on the Open Fibre Networks Limited (OFNL) platform, which tends to service a fair number of UK new build home developments with ultrafast FTTH.

Now Pure’s Managing Director, Adrian Bolster, has informed HullLive that they have “big plans” to expand their network across the region. The company recently made a start on that by gobbling a little known wireless rival called Relax Broadband for an undisclosed sum. Relax previously served customers in the Beverley area.

Adrian Bolster said:

“For the past 12 months we’ve been focusing on improving the speed and stability of our network for current customers, and are now in a position to take the company to the next level. When the opportunity to acquire Relax Broadband was presented to us, we just couldn’t say no, and are delighted to be expanding our network into the area.

We have big plans to expand our network across the East Riding in the near future, and are on the lookout for more acquisitions to facilitate this.”

At present it’s not known precisely what the provider’s “big plans” are, although they have made some vague mentions of an aspiration to offer “ultrafast broadband” to every property in the East Riding area. This would obviously be a significant challenge to KCOM and Pure certainly wouldn’t be the first ISP to take on the local incumbent, although so far most have only managed to make a small dent.

A little digging reveals that the acquisition of Relax Broadband actually occurred at the start of November last year, although Pure doesn’t make any mention of this on their website’s news page (i.e. it doesn’t appear to have been updated since last summer). Instead you’d have to scroll down through a fair few promotional updates on their Facebook page in order to spot the brief mention.