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KCOM UK Unveil Major 10Gb Broadband Expansion and Retires Copper

Thursday, Sep 8th, 2022 (2:40 pm) - Score 4,448
kcom telegraph pole female engineer

Hull-based network builder and broadband ISP KCOM has today announced a second major expansion of their existing gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which will see them invest a further £100m to cover an additional 50,000 premises across East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (14 new locations).

In case anybody has forgotten, KCOM originally invested around £85m to spread full fibre infrastructure across their core network patch of c.195,000 premises in the Hull city area. Soon after that the operator was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure for the hefty sum of £627m (here) and in early 2020 they began a large £100m network expansion into more competitive areas of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (here).

As a result of that effort, the operator’s fibre infrastructure can now reach around 300,000 premises across the region (up from the c.250,000 at the end of last year) and they’ve also got 150 wholesale partners, including various smaller ISPs. Suffice to say that they’ve made a lot of progress, but today’s announcement will see them push even further beyond their original network patch.

The extra £100m being announced today includes £62m to expand its FTTP network to more than 50,000 more homes and businesses in 14 initial towns and villages across the region. More towns and villages are due to be “announced in the coming months.” The work will also mean the creation of up to 50 new local, skilled engineering jobs to help build the network.

The 14 Initial Full Fibre Expansion Locations

Flamborough
Eastfield
Hunmanby
East Ayton
Cayton
Stamford Bridge
Snaith
Cowick
Caistor
Market Rasen
Louth
Mablethorpe
Sutton
Alford

On top of that, £10m will be used to upgrade 14,000 properties in East Yorkshire currently without full fibre (e.g. Cherry Burton), then £17m to replace the ageing copper phone lines in Hull with their full fibre network and, finally, £10m will cover the long term upgrade of their existing fibre network to enable download speeds of 10Gbps.

Tim Shaw, KCOM CEO, said:

“KCOM has always been a pioneering company in a pioneering city and we’ve always led from the front when it’s come to pushing the boundaries of connectivity technology.

In 2019, KCOM enabled Hull to become the first full fibre broadband city in the UK when we completed our first fibre network rollout – more than a decade ahead of the rest of the UK. Then, in 2020, we announced ambitious plans to invest £100m to reach a further 100,000 properties in East Yorkshire and, for the first time in the company’s history, across the Humber to North Lincolnshire.

Now, in that same pioneering spirit we are forging ahead again. As we expand our world class network so more towns and villages can experience the benefits of ultrafast, Fibre To The Premises, broadband.

This £100m investment is a statement of confidence in our business, our region and our future as we make our region one of the best connected in the UK and beyond. This will cement our reputation as a world class destination that’s not only a great place to live but also a place where high value digital and tech businesses can invest and thrive. This investment will be a major boost to the local economy creating dozens of skilled jobs and enhancing local supply chains.”

We should add that today’s announcement also included a commitment to spend £500k on a new Full Fibre for Everyone programme (inc. related events) over the next 3 years, which reflects a digital inclusion scheme (e.g. digital training sessions schools and community centres, installing open access WiFi in public buildings and investing in local infrastructure like rural hubs / village halls).

In terms of the £17m they’ve committed to replace the ageing copper phone lines in Hull with their full fibre network, this is more about migrating the “170,000 customers still on copper phone lines” to the new network. As above, KCOM has already covered their old network patch with FTTP, but a lot of people haven’t upgraded from ADSL, FTTC (VDSL2) and phone line-only products etc.

The operator noted that only 14,000 customers from that figure of 170k are on copper-based broadband products, thus this primarily reflects those with copper phone lines. KCOM expects this migration work to finish by the end of 2024. All of this is roughly in keeping with what we reported in July for their wholesale customers (here). No doubt the usual issues with IP-based phone services and reliability during power outages will crop-up, although KCOM do have a battery system to help.

The biggest challenge for KCOM going forward is that a number of alternative networks are now actively starting to overbuild their own FTTP with rival infrastructure, which is partly why they’re upgrading to a 10Gbps capable network (we assume this means XGS-PON kit); although they still would have needed to do it at some point.

Nevertheless, such competition may eventually (we hope) also force KCOM to offer much more competitive pricing in even their traditional safe haven of Hull. At present, most of their best discounted rates have typically only been offered to those in their recent network expansion areas (i.e. where rivals already exist), but that can cause confusion and may soon become untenable.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
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Comments
4 Responses
  1. Avatar photo MrTruth says:

    Haven’t a clue what you are trying to say.

  2. Avatar photo James says:

    So no real news as such. Just more announcements.

    There’s no way anyone outside of Hull would take up KCOM when their prices are much more expensive than competitors.

    1. Avatar photo TBC says:

      You would if openreach and others haven’t and won’t be doing FTTP in your area for the considerable future?

  3. Avatar photo Albert says:

    Is there a list of the places they’re upgrading to full fibre other than Cherry Burton?

Comments are closed

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