KCOM Connect 100000 Customers to FTTP Broadband in Hull UK

The incumbent broadband ISP for Hull and East Yorkshire, KCOM, has announced that 100,000 customers have now taken out a service on their new £85m “Lightstream” FTTP broadband network, which covers 195,000 premises; this represents an extremely strong take-up of just over 50%.

The figures show a nice improvement from KCOM’s previous set of results in July 2019, which noted that they had 126,900 broadband customers (residential and business) or 91,400 when only looking at “fibre broadband“. The vast majority of their fibre network is 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP), although a tiny proportion are still covered via FTTC (VDSL2) and a few buildings have yet to be connected to either due to problems with access.

Meanwhile KCOM continues to maintain their old copper line based ADSL2+ broadband network as a fair few customers are still using it, although the latest take-up figures suggest that it won’t be long before the operator can start retiring their copper infrastructure. The removal of copper would make their network a lot more cost effective to maintain.

The latest development comes shortly after Macquarie Infrastructure (MIRA / MEIF 6 Fibre) confirmed that they had finalised their £627m acquisition KCOM (here). Going forward they intend to expand FTTP into new areas and make it available via more third-party ISPs (likely via a better wholesale proposition).

Sean Royce, KCOM Managing Director, said:

“I’m delighted that 100,000 KCOM customers in Hull and East Yorkshire are now seeing the real benefits of our cutting edge Lightstream network.

The full fibre technology we’ve rolled out across our network means the region is one of the most connected on the planet. Indeed, if Hull was an independent republic ­– as it sometimes feels – it would be the fastest broadband nation on Earth.

This means our customers can stream, surf and download better than ever before at home while businesses can work faster and more efficiently and compete at a global level.

Our full fibre network is also providing the foundations for a digital and tech economy renaissance in Hull and the surrounding area.”

The announcement notes that “the rest of the UK still has some ground to make up on Hull and East Yorkshire, which has 100 per cent full fibre coverage compared to just eight percent nationally,” although as above this isn’t entirely correct. KCOM is still just a little below 100% coverage but they have done exceptionally well.

We also think it’s worth noting, particularly given all of the current talk about speeding up the rollout of full fibre across the United Kingdom, that it took KCOM roughly 7 years to rollout FTTP across their patch of c.200,000 premises and they’re an operator with market dominance. Even in optimal circumstances it still takes a long time to build.