ISP KCOM Lets New Customers Try 900Mbps Full Fibre for £25
Hull-based UK ISP KCOM has recently launched a special promotion for those living in their new “full fibre” network coverage areas around East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, which gives new customers the freedom to try every broadband speed at just £25 a month for the first 6 months of service (from 900Mbps to 75Mbps).
At present KCOM already has a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network that stretches across their incumbent patch (c.200,000 premises) in East Yorkshire (mostly in and around Hull). But over the past year they’ve also begun a major £100m network expansion (here and here) build into new and more competitive parts of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, which is the focus of today’s offer.
The operator, which is keen to drive take-up in their new build areas, has launched a special promotion that reduces all of their packages to just £25 a month for the first 6 months of service. After that the standard monthly price will apply for the remaining 12 months on an 18-month term: 75Mbps (£42), 200Mbps (£46), 400Mbps (£50), 900Mbps (£79) – a £25 one-off connection fee also applies.
KCOM says there are no limits on the number of times you can switch package, and no additional costs either, although in practice we suspect that most people will obviously use the promotion to try their top 900Mbps tier (i.e. getting the maximum value for your money). The new offer is available to take until 30th June 2021.
Take note that, not unlike a lot of big UK ISPs, KCOM’s prices are subject to a CPI (inflation) + 3.9% increase that occurs annually every March.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Not North East Lincolnshire though. Strange pricing, must think that there’s a lot of lottery winners.
Can a customer leave at the end of the 6th month fee free and without “penalty”, once they have “tried” the 900Mbps broadband?
If not it’s not really letting them “try” it at all, it’s just a discount on the first 6 months of an 18 month contract?
I read it that they could try and the 900mbps but could switch down to the lower speed for the remainder of there contract. So can try the top package without being stuck on the top package for the whole contract.
Whilst I like the 6 month sweetener, the pricing afterwards leaves a lot to be desired.
My thoughts exactly.
Very little demand. They are having to fire sale at under £21 a month to try to stimulate.
Pretty much what Virgin Media said in their response to the Ofcom Area 3 consultation… there is not much organic demand for services faster than 40/10 yet, take-up of faster tiers is mostly due to marketing and price promotions.
I expect most people who try the 900Mbps service will be disappointed when they find they can only achieve a fraction of that speed over Wi-Fi. 900Mbps sounds good, but at the moment it’s only really useful to the kind of people who’ve installed ethernet cables around their home, ie. the kind of people who frequent this site!
Full fibre is just FTTP with support for “unlimited” speeds. The backbone is what handles the up and down. There’s no demand for higher uploads so why waste the cash now and have it become damaged/degrade over time when they can leave it until demand is there and make it fresh.
The pricing page has wholesale higher upload residential packages, suggests they’ll be available to their own retail customers at some point.
At a glance the package speeds look quite comparable to BT based FTTP, but still far of being symmetrical.
I’ve stuck with 400/35 for quite a while but might go for 500/100 or 750/150 when they start offering it, the current 900/50 just isn’t worth it at £79!
They’re bumping me off the 400/35 now and trying to push me onto 400/80 for another £5 a month.
Don’t need the extra upload. The new £50 package is 300/75.
Sigh. Old KCOM are starting to creep back in!
But… the catch is… You basically have to live in Hull.
Not anymore, though. They’re not offering these new pricing offers to those living in Hull, only in their new network areas. I don’t understand how they’re going to compete and feel like they’re going to waste a lot of money as most people wouldn’t want to pay so much. Why would anyone pay 40 quid a month for a 40mbps connection when it’s available from literally anyone else for less.
Prices inflate by at least 3.9% annually, compounded.
This should be illegal.
It might say it can bit those speeds but it can’t. I had 900 mbps installed in goole and wired it can only reach 300. They can’t work out why but still expect you to pay for the full speed while they in investigate.