KC Brings Cheap 1000Mbps Fibre Optic Broadband to Hull Businesses

The incumbent telecoms operator for Hull in East Yorkshire (England), KC, has announced the launch of several new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based “Lightstream” fibre optic broadband packages for businesses, with download speed options of 250Mbps, 500Mbps, 750Mbps and 1000Mbps.

The operators dominance of Hull’s fixed line phone and broadband market might not be facing much of a significant challenge at the consumer end, although there are a number of rival and business focused pure fibre optic and Ethernet ISPs in the area (e.g. MS3, Cityfibre) that are beginning to threaten.

As a result KC has now seen fit to leverage the growing coverage of their FTTP based Lightstream infrastructure by launching a new range of ultrafast broadband packages.

Director of KC Business, Alan Worthing, said:

“More than 2,000 local businesses across the region are already using Lightstream and they’re telling us it’s making them more productive and efficient. We’ve introduced our new, faster packages in response to this and to coincide with the Government’s voucher scheme, which is making it more affordable than ever for local firms to benefit from ultrafast internet speeds even if our Lightstream roll-out hasn’t reached them yet.

We launched the new services last Wednesday and received our first order for the 1Gbps service the following day, so we know there’s demand for even faster services. We’re looking forward to making them available to more businesses in the coming months.”

The new options appear to lack some of the more advanced features of KC’s Leased Line solutions, such as dedicated (uncontended) traffic and a strong Service Level Agreement (SLA), although they make up for that by being cheap, flexible (add unlimited usage for an extra £10 per month) and incredibly fast.

Lightstream Business Broadband (Prices +vat)

Office Light 250
Up to 250 Mbps download speed
Up to 125 Mbps upload speed
150 GB monthly download allowance
Multiple IP addresses
100MB business webspace
Email an-spam and anti-virus protection
24 month contract

PRICE: £30 a month

Office Pro 500
As above plus..
Up to 500 Mbps download speed
Up to 250 Mbps upload speed
600GB monthly download allowance

PRICE: £60 a month

Office Ultra 750
As above plus..
Up to 750 Mbps download speed
Up to 375 Mbps upload speed
600 GB monthly download allowance

PRICE: £85 a month

Office Ultra 1 Gb
As above plus..
Up to 1 Gbps download speed
Up to 500 Mbps upload speed
750 GB monthly download allowance

PRICE: £120 a month

The danger of offering such solutions is of course that you also risk undercutting your own leased line market, which is one of several reasons why some believe that BT has been slow to deploy similar FTTP/C solutions into business areas. Never the less KC clearly recognises that the goalposts are moving with the ever improving performance of consumer broadband and ultimately the time has come to adapt.

One thing that isn’t mentioned in KC’s official press release or their website summary is that the new packages are available alongside a special offer, which gives subscribers either £10 or £20 off per month for the length of the contract if businesses sign-up for 24 months.

It should be noted that the official products page only sells 24 month contracts and so the above discounts have been applied automatically, which means that the normal (non-offer) pricing should actually start at £40 +vat per month (250Mbps) and rise to £140 for the 1000Mbps option.