KC announces acceleration of UK’s most extensive superfast broadband programme

KC has announced plans to accelerate its roll-out of the UK’s most extensive ultrafast fibre broadband network across Hull and East Yorkshire.

The communications firm has revealed it will double the rate of its fibre roll-out over the next two years to make the KC Lightstream service available to an additional 60,000 homes and businesses.

With 45,000 properties already able to access the service, the investment means that by 2017 more than 105,000 properties in the region will be among the best connected in Britain.

Hull is the only city in the UK where broadband officially described as “ultrafast” – delivering speeds of at least 100Mbps (megabits per second) – is being rolled out as standard.

KC Lightstream provides guaranteed download speeds including 100Mbps and 250Mbps by connecting fibre cables from the telephone exchange all the way to customers’ homes or businesses.

Broadband deployments in most other parts of the UK deliver slower speeds because fibre is laid only as far as street cabinets, with existing copper cables used to complete the connection to customers’ properties.

Because of KC’s future-proofed deployment, it is estimated that a third of all the UK’s “fibre to the premises” connections are in the Hull area.

The announcement is also consistent with a new Government ambition, revealed in the recent Budget, that ultrafast connections should become available to “nearly all UK premises” to make Britain among the best connected nations in the world.

News of the accelerated roll-out has been welcomed by local businesses, Hull City Council and East Riding of Yorkshire Council.

The decision to accelerate KC’s fibre roll-out follows an enthusiastic response to date. More than a third of properties where Lightstream is available have signed up to the service, while take-up by businesses is at more than 40 per cent.

Some of the roll-out locations for Lightstream over the next year have already been announced, and include the Beverley High Road area of Hull, parts of east Hull, Cottingham and North Ferriby.

KC’s managing director Gary Young, said: “We want to give our customers the best-connected homes and businesses in the UK, and that’s what KC Lightstream delivers. The feedback we have received from customers who have taken the service, homes and businesses alike, has been extremely positive.

“We said from the start that this is an ambitious project and it will take time to make Lightstream available across our entire network. The industry-leading take-up rates we have achieved so far have enabled an increase in our level of investment to accelerate the pace of deployment.

“We believe the additional investment we are making to speed up our roll-out is fantastic news for KC customers and for our region.”

From 1 April Hull will become one of 50 cities across the UK that are part of the Government’s Superfast Cities scheme. Under the scheme small and medium sized businesses can receive a grant of up to £3,000 towards the cost of connecting to superfast broadband. More information about the scheme is at www.kcbusiness.co.uk/superfasthull.