ISP KCOM Secures £30m to Boost 1Gb FTTP Broadband Rollout UPDATE

Hull-based UK ISP KCOM, which covers a big chunk of East Yorkshire with their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, has secured an additional 2 year funding facility from Lloyds Bank worth £30m. The extra investment will help expand their network into more of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire.

Just to recap. Last year KCOM completed a major £85m project to deploy their “full fibre” broadband network across virtually their entire patch (c.200,000 premises) in East Yorkshire (mostly in and around Hull). Soon after that the operator was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure for the surprisingly hefty sum of £627m (here).

Since that takeover the new owners have pledged to invest a further £100m to help extend KCOM’s FTTP network reach into “tens of thousands more homes and businesses” across both East Yorkshire and also North Lincolnshire (here and here). The first locations named on their initial roll-out plan were the market town of Driffield, followed by Market Weighton and then the modest sized village of Nafferton. (c.10,000 premises).

A rapid deployment into those locations has been taking place for the past few months and quite a few premises have already been connected. As part of their on-going work the operator has now secured a £30m funding facility from Lloyds Bank (£18m of this stems from the bank’s Clean Growth Finance Initiative -CGFI), which is helping to pay for their initial deployment.

Dale Raneberg, KCOM’s CEO, said:

“Our sustained investment in Hull since 2012 has seen it become the UK’s leading city for digital connectivity and places it among the highest-ranking cities in the world for broadband speed.

The positive economic impact of this investment couldn’t be clearer, with the latest figures indicating that Hull has benefited by almost £500m as a result.

Our focus has always been to support growth and innovation through world-leading connectivity, which remains the case as we embark on our next phase of network expansion.

With much of the UK now working or learning from home, it’s more important than ever that families and businesses have access to the fastest broadband speeds available to aid the collective economic recovery.”

More recently KCOM has quietly also added Pocklington, Howden and Goole to their future FTTP roll-out plan (“Fibre Network Expansion Area“), although we didn’t receive an announcement about this but it does appear in small print on their website. Ofcom are currently in the process of reviewing KCOM’s position in the local market, which may need some tweaking now that they’ve begun to expand beyond their traditionally incumbent roots around Hull.

UPDATE 3:46pm

KCOM has just confirmed that Withernsea and Hornsea will be joining Pocklington, Howden and Goole on the next phase of their on-going roll-out. “In its latest phase of expansion KCOM will connect 22,000 more properties right across the East Riding, reaching from North Sea coastal communities to the western fringes of the county,” said KCOM to ISPreview.co.uk.

Matt Warman, UK Minister for Digital Infrastructure, said:

“It’s fantastic that more people and businesses across East Riding will have their broadband boosted as KCOM expands its full fibre network.

Alongside £5 billion from the government, industry investment in next-generation internet speed will be vital to our plans to unlock the true economic potential of villages, towns and regions across the UK.”

The operator also confirmed that it had now “completed engineering work” in Driffield, Market Weighton and Nafferton. Otherwise the latest phase of KCOM’s network expansion will see 8,500 properties in Goole, 4,500 homes in Pocklington, 4,000 properties in Hornsea, 3,000 properties in Withernsea and nearly 2,000 homes in Howden connected to FTTP.

We expect more locations to be announced in August 2020.