ISP KC Expands Fibre Optic Broadband to 45,000 Hull UK Premises by 2015

KC, the incumbent internet and phone provider for Hull and East Yorkshire (England), has successfully completed the initial roll-out of their “super-fast” 350Mbps capable and fibre optic based Lightstream broadband service to pass 15,000 local premises. It now plans to reach an extra 30,000 homes and businesses by March 2015.

The KCOM Group confirmed, as part of its unaudited interim financial results to 30th September 2012, that it had officially passed the first 15,000 premises target last month. The original goal was for the initial deployment to be completed by the end of 2012.

KC predominantly uses ultra-fast Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) as its “technology of choice” for delivering the service, although some areas will also make use of a slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) solution that is similar to BT’s product. The ISPs FTTH solution currently offers top speeds of up to 350Mbps (Megabits per second) and prices start at £25 per month for a 45Mbps connection.

Bill Halbert, Executive Chairman of the KCOM Group, said:

“I am pleased to announce further progress towards our longer term goals and another solid set of results, with profitable contributions from all our operating brands. In KC, we continue to see strong demand for our bundled services.

Our initial deployment of super-fast fibre based broadband services has been completed very successfully, and the encouraging results have led us to announce today that we will treble the number of homes we reach with our next phase of fibre deployment.”

So far, the initial phase has attracted 3,200 fibre broadband customers (a strong uptake of 21.33% by our calculations), which is said to be “well above the initial target and expectations” with approximately 7% of those customers being new to KC.

As a consequence KCOM’s overall capital expenditure for FY14 and FY15 is expected to be consistent with current year guidance of £30 million. Meanwhile KC’s profit before tax was up slightly to £27.6 million, although their net debt increased to £94.3 million.

Annoyingly KCOM does not include additional broadband subscriber details in their financial results and refuses to supply them when asked (we’d be grateful if any shareholders could request the details for us).

UPDATE 10:21am

Missed out the word “extra” in our opening paragraph, which is necessary to reflect the fact that the 30,000 figure is in addition to the current 15,000.