KCOM Unveil £85m Lightstream Broadband Rollout for 100% of Hull UK

The incumbent telecoms operator for Hull in East Yorkshire UK, KCOM, has today announced the final phase of their “Lightstream” roll-out, which will extend their “ultrafast” fibre optic broadband (FTTP/C) services to cover 100% of their network area (around 200,000 premises) by March 2019.

At present the operator expects to have completed their penultimate deployment phase by the end of 2017, which has so far consumed an investment of around £60 million (mostly funded by the sale of their UK fibre network assets to Cityfibre – excluding Hull) and should reach 150,000 premises with their ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology (note: around 7-8% of this is being done via slower FTTC / VDSL2 technology).

Residential consumers are currently offered a maximum line speed of up to 250Mbps (30Mbps upload) on FTTP (soon to be 350Mbps), although the smaller area reached by slower FTTC are only able to access speeds of up to 75Mbps. Overall some 50,000 homes and 5,000 businesses have already connected to the new network.

However, much as we reported yesterday (here), KCOM has now confirmed that they intend to increase their investment into the Lightstream deployment by another £25 million (total £85m) in order to cover the remaining 50,000 homes and businesses within their network footprint by March 2019.

Bill Halbert, KCOM’s CEO, said:

“I am delighted to announce our plans to complete what is arguably the most ambitious full fibre deployment in the UK. This is the final piece in the jigsaw in securing Hull as the digital capital of the UK.

When we set out to transform our broadband network in 2012 our plan was to put Hull and East Yorkshire at the cutting edge of a digital revolution that would help to build a city and an economy fit for the 21st century.

We believed investing in full fibre broadband was the right thing to do both for the company and our customers, and that belief is now bearing fruit.

With roots in the city reaching back to 1904, KCOM has always been at the forefront of innovation and, with the completion of our Lightstream deployment now in sight, we can be proud of the fact that Hull still leads the way while others follow.

The people of Hull and East Yorkshire have supported our ambition by signing up to Lightstream in their tens of thousands. Their confidence will help us to make the KCOM network the fastest, the most connected and the most future-proofed not only in the UK but the world by 2019.”

By March 2019 KCOM now expects to have installed more than 11,000,000 metres of optical fibre cable (up from about 8 million metres today), which they say is enough to stretch around the Moon. In order to achieve this KCOM aims to ensure that their new network will become available to 3,000 new properties every month.

At present the Lightstream Rollout page on KCOM’s website doesn’t list any new deployments beyond December 2017, although no doubt this will change. We’ve also asked the operator to confirm how much of the final phase will involve FTTC instead of FTTP, if any. However, we broadly expect that the majority of this final phase will still receive a “full fibre” network.

UPDATE 10:06am

KCOM has confirmed that the deployment will finish with 96% coverage of FTTP “full fibre“, while the remaining 4% will be FTTC. Most of the FTTC will be in several villages beyond the operator’s “original licenced network“.