The incumbent telecoms operator for Hull and East Yorkshire in England, KC (soon to become KCOM), has today announced another major boost to their on-going “Lightstream” fibre optic broadband (FTTP/C) roll-out, which will now aim to cover 150,000 premises by December 2017.
At present KC’s network deployment is still dominated by their “ultrafast” 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) technology (note: residential packages currently go up to 250Mbps), although there is little bit of the slower hybrid-fibre Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology in certain limited areas.
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In terms of progress, the last update in November 2015 appeared to confirm that their fibre network had reached 55,000 premises (20,000 customers subscribed) and the goal back then was to expand this to 105,000 East Yorkshire premises by March 2017 (i.e. today’s news represents a +45,000 increase in premises passed, albeit alongside an extra 9 months of roll-out time).
The expanded deployment will mean that KC’s fibre broadband roll-out should soon reach “approximately three-quarters” of their total network footprint and the total capital investment required to achieve this is expected to hit £60 million (roughly £400 per premises).
Gary Young, KC’s Managing Director, said:
“We’re focused on improving services for our customers, which is why we’re investing many millions of pounds to make Hull the UK’s ultrafast broadband capital.
During the next phase of our deployment we’ll be focusing on taking our Lightstream service to areas of our network where speeds are slower than average because of the length of copper cable from customers’ homes and businesses to the telephone exchange.
Our ambition to make this region the best-connected in the UK will help local people make the most of the benefits of being online and help businesses to start up and grow, creating jobs and long-term prosperity.
We’re a successful national business but our roots remain firmly in this area and our commitment to Hull and East Yorkshire remains as strong as ever. Moving to a national brand means we can raise the profile of the region at the same time as promoting our business.”
Admittedly this will still leave a big chunk of KC’s network to be stuck on significantly older and slower ADSL based broadband services. Naturally the downside of deploying a pure ultrafast fibre optic network is that it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time, although KC appears to be achieving a reasonably cost effective deployment.
The upside of FTTP is of course that once you’ve completed the work then your network can deliver ultra-fast speeds (i.e. the limit becomes data capacity rather than physical infrastructure) and it should have no problems adapting to demand for the foreseeable future. Maintenance costs may also be lower.
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By comparison BTOpenreach has preferred to focus on deploying slower speed ‘up to’ 80Mbps hybrid-fibre FTTC (VDSL) services across the United Kingdom, which as we’ve seen with G.fast will need future expensive upgrades in order to keep pace. The upside of FTTC is that it’s cheap and significantly quicker to deploy, so people do see the benefits far sooner.
Eventually we expect that KC / KCOM will work their way around to achieving 100% network coverage, although we wouldn’t be surprised if future announcements involved a greater mix of FTTC in order to reach some of the more remote communities. But for now FTTP is still king at KC.
Today it’s also stated that KCOM’s business operates five brands serving more than 170,000 customers across the UK and they’ve recently become debt free after the sale of their UK network assets to Cityfibre (excluding Hull and East Yorkshire) for £90m.
All of this begs another interesting question. In theory we could see KC achieving 100% fibre coverage by around 2020 and at that point they might well become the first major telecoms operator to consider whether or not it’s time to set a date for the withdrawal of their old copper line network (where possible it may become cheaper to focus on their pure fibre optic infrastructure).
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