KCOM Confirm Next FTTP Fibre Broadband Roll-out Areas in Hull UK

KCOM has today announced the next roll-out phase for their “ultrafast” Lightstream fibre optic (FTTP/C) broadband network in Hull (East Yorkshire), which reflects the next 6 months of deployment from now until March 2017; this will add an additional 25,000 premises passed to the total.

At present KCOM has already expanded their new network to cover 100,000 local premises and they aim to reach 150,000 by December 2017. The vast majority of this deployment is being done via 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) technology, with just 8% being covered by the slower (up to 75Mbps) Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) service (here).

The information released by KCOM today includes street-level detail of where the service will go live before the end of 2016, as well as the broad areas where it will become available between January and March 2017. Some 25,000 premises will be covered by this next phase.

Rough Roll-out List – November 2016 to March 2017

November 2016
Willerby Road
Beverley High Road
Anlaby
Kirk Ella
Hedon
Preston

December 2016
Stoneferry (Leads Road and Foredyke Avenue)

February – March 2017
Beverley (Beckside and Flemingate)
Hessle (Tranby Avenue, Jenny Brough Lane and parts of Willerby including Main Street and Well Lane)

A much more detailed availability update can be found on KCOM’s website (https://www.kcomhome.com/products/broadband/lightstream-rollout/).

Cathy Phillips, KCOM’s Marketing Chief, said:

“Since increasing our investment in our fibre deployment, Hull is well and truly the UK’s ultrafast city. We’re connecting a new customer to Lightstream every half an hour and as our rollout continues to gather pace we’re very happy to be making Lightstream available to areas in the east, west and north of the city as well as in many surrounding towns and villages over the coming months.”

We should point out that the 1Gbps (1000Mbps+) figure given for FTTP performance above reflects the business connections, while residential consumers are generally offered a maximum line speed of 250Mbps (30Mbps upload).

KCOM’s capital expenditure for the next 2 financial years’ is expected to be “greater than” £40 million per annum, which largely reflects their increased investment into fibre. This is partly being fuelled by KCOM’s earlier £90m sale of their UK network assets to Cityfibre (excludes Hull and East Yorkshire).