KCOM Fibre Broadband Reaches 78,000 Premises in East Yorkshire

KCOM, the incumbent telecoms operator for Hull and East Yorkshire in England, has revealed that their on-going “Lightstream” roll-out of fibre optic broadband (FTTP/C) services has now covered 78,000 premises with 26,000 connected including 1,700 businesses (33.33% take-up).

The deployment, which aims to pass 150,000 premises by December 2017, remains dominated by their “ultrafast” 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) technology (note: residential packages currently go up to 250Mbps), although there will be a little bit of the slower hybrid-fibre Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology in some areas.

Bill Halbert, KCOM’s CEO, said:

“We have made important progress with our strategic objectives in the current year, including the consolidation of our activities under a single brand, KCOM.

In Hull and East Yorkshire, we continued our fibre to the premises deployment, reaching 78,000 premises by 31 March 2016 and committing to reach 150,000 premises by December 2017. Level of take-up remains high with 26,000 premises connected by March 2016. We had a very successful year with our enterprise customers, developing our existing relationships as well as securing new contracts; of particular note are BUPA, ATOC and Shoosmiths (preferred supplier). The disposal of our national network assets has strengthened our balance sheet and advanced very substantially our options for longer term transformation.

The combination of the strength of our balance sheet and the progress we have made this year will see us accelerate investment over the course of the next few years. Alongside acceleration of our fibre programme, we will invest in new services and capabilities, in particular to support our enterprise customers.”

The operator’s latest report also reveals that their capital expenditure for the next two financial years will be “greater than” £40 million per annum, which they say reflects the increased fibre investment.

In keeping with that KCOM also reported a £44.5 million profit from the disposal of their national UK fibre optic network (excluding East Yorkshire) to CityFibre, which the latter picked up for £90m at the end of 2015 (here). Elsewhere they spent £4.1 million on restructuring costs related to rebranding (KC and Eclipse Internet recently became KCOM etc.).