KCOM Build FTTP Broadband to Rural Village of East Cottingwith
Hull-based UK broadband ISP KCOM, which is currently extending their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across more of East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (England), has added the small rural East Yorkshire village of East Cottingwith (population of around 350) to their coverage.
The operator’s full fibre network already covers around 300,000 premises, but in September 2022 they announced a second £100m network expansion and upgrade project (here), which aims to extend across another 50,000 premises by around 2025 – focusing upon 14 primary build locations.
However, KCOM has also been working with the government’s rural focused Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) to reach into a number of smaller communities, with the latest one to benefit being the small village of East Cottingwith (the fibre for this was probably run from their nearby build in Melbourne and Seaton Ross).
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Neil Hobbs, Chairman of East Cottingwith and Storwood Parish Council, said:
“We’re a village without a school, without a pub, without a village shop. We don’t have a focal point so the Village Hall has become that.
We live in the modern world and there’s no reason why East Cottingwith should suffer from a lack of infrastructure that remote villages historically have done. Having fast fibre broadband is really important to a rural community. I think KCOM has been a very good company to do business with.”
Customers of the new network tend to pay from £29.99 per month for a basic 30Mbps (5Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term, which rises to £69.99 for their top 900Mbps (180Mbps upload) tier (currently discounted to £59.99). A one-off £24.99 connection fee also applies.
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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wow, those are high prices.
Tell me about it… Sigh
Their latest annual reports outline consumer revenue with an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of £37.96 and also mentions they’ve begun testing XGS PON.
It does look like they are going to face tough competition from MS3, Connexin and Grain as users contracts expire.
Plus all these places they are expanding to will eventually get access to other BT or other FTTP providers.
MS3 wholesalers are offering 100/100 from £20 and 1000/1000 from £30, which can’t be sustainable, most seem to be just reselling/white labelling MS3 products so they only difference should be customer service.
I haven’t jumped to MS3 yet, they only appear to upstream with Cogent, no peering at LINK or LONAP.
Some reports of issues getting a static IP or out of date databases of country or past use for hosting could be annoying.
It’s probably perfectly fine and I’ll eventually get around to switching, but a single upstream doesn’t seem good, we have enough problems when KCOM loses their IX links.
@James, I used to have a service from Kcom years ago, I think it was Eclipse, it was ok, but then they started to increase prices. I don’t think they own it now.
if they want to get customers, they need to decrease their prices.
We would like to provide some details in response to the post from @Miken.
We are in the process of connecting at LINX to allow us to peer and bring on a 2nd transit provider. We are aiming to have this work completed in the next few weeks.
For clarity, MS3 provides both Layer 2 and Layer 3 services – this only applies for customers who connect via our Layer 3 service. Our wholesale partners who connect via Layer 2 services from us, will provide their own IP space, peering & transit.
@MS3 Networks, thanks for the info
Surely we have reached the point now where a reasonable speed internet connection is no longer a luxury but a necessity for a household, just like electricity and running water.
So based on that, is it fair that people in rural areas should pay a higher price for a reasonable speed connection?
I’m not blaming companies such as KCOM, they have to make it profitable when carrying out expensive builds in rural areas.
yes it is because they get all the benefits of living rural. its all a trade off at the end of the day.
Also I find it funny that a decade or more ago we were told by BT that it would be cities who got FTTP first because of density which made sense, then it turned out that planning permission and what not was a nightmare so BT just sweat copper.
The altnets then decide to do the rural ones in some places and then gradually we see an explosion of altnets. I pray those altnets don’t consolidate and we retain what we have. I’m with an altnet and have full gigabit up and down and I can max that out over vpn too (wireguard). I get an 8ms gateway down to london.
Most of the time they don’t. Both the build and the ongoing monthly costs are subsidised by folks in urban areas. Openreach charges the same whether you’re in the middle of a city or the only person connected to your own fibre tap 500 metres from the next property.
Where they do the companies don’t have the urban build to spread the costs across so have no choice.
So either properties in urban dwellings pay a levy on top of their bill to subsidise rural or the taxpayer subsidises it. Urban dwellings on Openreach already pay extra on top of their bill to subsidise rural, it would have to be made more explicit to provide funding to non-Openreach projects.
interesting
have deal with premises that dont have either of the above and still expect fibre
@mrpops2ko, benefits of living rural, what are they then? Can;t be public transport because that is awful in a lot of places, can’t be shops because a lot of shops have closed down in Rural areas, you may get a pub, if you are lucky, where the other half live there are no buses and the pubs are a fair walk, which is nice in the summer. She has a bit of peace and quiet, but for that she have to pay stupid amount of council tax for the extra services she doesn’t get. Thankfully, she can get decent broadband as Gigaclear is around her area