back to article See you in Hull: First UK city to be hooked up to full-fibre broadband

Step forward, Hull: first city in Blighty to claim the title of full-fibre connectivity. Following an £85m investment by regional monopoly KCOM, around 200,000 homes and businesses in the locale now have access to "ultrafast" speeds of 1Gbps. The Hull-based company was recently acquired by global infrastructure investor …

  1. Adrian 4

    2025

    "Currently just 8 per cent of properties across the UK currently have access to full-fibre broadband. However, prime minister Boris Johnson has pledged to bring full fibre to everyone by 2025 – a goal that has been deemed unachievable by telecoms exports."

    Sure. But Boris Johnson is full of crap. Why on earth would anyone take any notice of his latest lies ?

    It's a mystery to me that news outlets even give him screentime.

    1. macjules
      Coat

      Re: 2025

      Boris Johnson has pledged to bring full fibre to everyone by 2025

      He meant giving everyone access to Cornflakes. Last thing these populist demagogues need is voters having access to information.

    2. Adrian 4

      Re: 2025

      "18 thumbs up & 7 thumbs down"

      REALLY ? There are SEVEN actual genuine non-sock-puppet people here who think BJ isn't an oxygen thief ?

      Some serious pointing and laughing is called for.

  2. Paul

    can we stop calling every internet circuit "broadband"?

    just because marketroids call it broadband, doesn't mean we have to. please use the correct term unless quoting someone verbatim.

    thanks

    1. elaar

      Re: can we stop calling every internet circuit "broadband"?

      Check out the different dictionary descriptions. Whether you like it or not, it seems to have been widely adopted as a generic term for transmitting data at high-speed between computers/internet.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: can we stop calling every internet circuit "broadband"?

        OK. So, now we need an accepted definition for "high speed" so we know what broadband is :-)

      2. DuncanLarge

        Re: can we stop calling every internet circuit "broadband"?

        I have always considered it as broadband being any dedicated connection to the internet, one that exists alongside a voice or service and does not suffer from interference from either.

        Basically anything that does not require you to dial up.

        I'd also say that it would need to be the generally accepted minimum speeds and latency of a typical connection, so ISDN is no longer valid.

        1. SImon Hobson Silver badge

          Re: can we stop calling every internet circuit "broadband"?

          I have always considered it as broadband being any dedicated connection to the internet

          That's the power of the marketing twits Paul refers to. Broadband is, or was, a very specific technical term - differentiating services such as xDSL which are broadband from services like ethernet (10[0[0]]base[2|5|SX|LX] which are narrowband.

          It's really annoying to have even technically literate people refer to any internet connection as broadband, even when it's most definitely narrowband. Such sloppy thinking is what leads to situations where clients will go and get FTTC installed because they can't understand the benefits of a campus wide network run over fibre - with a "proper" connection delivered over fibre, from a Tier 2 provider, and with a business grade SLA that goes with that sort of expenditure.

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Go

    Well done KCom

    but I hate the terminology "gigabit-capable connections". It sounds far too much like advertising doublespeak. Your car is a 300km/h-capable Car. i.e it has 4 wheels and an engine and thats pretty much the same as a Bugatti Veyron. You might need a few tweaks to it before your specific car can do 300km/h, but as some cars can do 300km/h, and you've got all the basic ingredients that make up a car, then there's nothing wrong with saying your car is 300km/h capable, right?

    Advertisers will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... Ok maybe the politicians first... but advertisers definitely second...

    1. hmv

      Re: Well done KCom

      Or lawyers. Or tabloid 'journalists'.

      Or perhaps we can just line up the lying scum and take care of the lot?

      1. TRT

        Re: Well done KCom

        In what they like to term "a sector resourcing realignment". Death's too good for them.

    2. MJB7

      Re: Well done KCom

      I suspect that isn't fair. I'm pretty sure that the fibre they run to the home is capable of getting 1Gbit, but most people don't actually have a use for that sort of speed ... so will be paying for a lower speed connection. Medium sized business might well have a use for that sort of speed.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Um

        1 Gb is only useful if you're connecting to multiple locations or for office to office connections. Most home users won't be streaming more than 1 or 2 videos, so unlikely to ever touch the limit. Might as well call it limitless.

        That said, when 2Mb broadband was first released, we had no notion we'd ever need more!

        1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

          Re: Um

          Also needs whatever's at the other end, and what's in between, to support those speeds. Download or upload, a connection is only as fast as the slowest part. Nice to see a larger rollout, but until that's commonplace both nationally and internationally, I don't expect users to see anywhere near gigabit performance for quite some time.

        2. Jedit Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          "when 2Mb broadband was first released, we had no notion we'd ever need more"

          I had this argument with my mother exactly once, when she switched from dialup to broadband and she was looking for the cheapest package while I recommended taking the faster package for a few more £/month: "What would I need it for?" "You'll find something to need it for." Next time she wanted to upgrade her internet connection, she opened with "What's the fastest I can get? I don't know what I'll need it for, but I'll find something".

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Well done KCom

        Sure it's not 1GBit shared amonst the 200,000 properties? About 5Mbit each?

        1. shaunhw

          Re: Well done KCom

          "Sure it's not 1GBit shared amonst the 200,000 properties? About 5Mbit each?"

          That would be 5 kilobits then wouldn't it?

    3. Tom 38

      Re: Well done KCom

      If its like every other FTTP I've seen, it means they can dial the speed up and down depending on how much you want to pay a month, without any engineer involvement. If you want to pay more, you can have faster speeds.

      1. Pangasinan Philippines

        Re: Well done KCom

        Exactly.

        I pay for 50Mb/s and 300GB data and that cost almost 40 GBP.

        With fibre at my feet I can go higher and faster if I want to pay more.

        I'm in Philippines which is supposed to be 3rd world ?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well done KCom

      Nah, PR and ad people first, they're the ones who lead the way with spin, without them politicians might actually stop with the doublespeak.

    5. DuncanLarge

      Re: Well done KCom

      Here is how I read it:

      Gigabit capable connections to every home = we have lots of bandwidth we can up sell to you bit by bit.

      They wont give it to you in one lump with a fairly decent monthly cost making Hull the fastest lot on the net. This is like buying a house but every few years you are sold an upgrade to your mortgage that "unlocks" some of the extra space/rooms in your house that were denied to you. This way you feel like the house is "getting bigger" and the company can send you letters explaining that they are increasing your prices in order to keep giving you a good service "we have expanded your property every year, but this as you will agree requires us to occasionally increase monthly charges blah blah blah".

  4. LeahroyNake

    Maybe sales should STFU

    'access to the fastest speeds on earth'

    I very much doubt they can provide 1.1 terrabits per second. Maybe wind that sales talk in a bit, what they have done sounds impressive and it doesn't need marketing BS on top that obviously don't have a clue.

    1. spold Silver badge

      Re: Maybe sales should STFU

      Didn't say which bit of earth

  5. Flywheel

    D'oh!

    Now all we need is decent public transport infrastructure that includes Hull so that companies and employees that want to work there can actually get there without having to drive.

  6. MrHuggy

    I'm currently live in Hull, i have to say KCOM has done a miraculous turnaround. They first started to roll out fiber to the rural villages as they kept having copper lines nicked. In Hull itself they have been running out fiber to every telegraph post, then connecting the houses up from there. If you had a problem with your phone line they just replace it with fiber, all new houses have fiber fitted. It is expensive, mainly due it been a small teleco but you pay for bandwidth rather than amount and the one fee includes line rental etc.

    1. Alister

      If you live in Hull, why are you spelling it fiber?

      ;)

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Um

        Last I heard, Hull was 2nd worst in UK for literacy.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Um

          Where is worse?

          1. IGotOut Silver badge

            Re: Um

            I here its worser on this fourum

          2. TRT

            Re: Um

            Ware? Terrible there. Murdertown.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Where is it worse?

            Scunny perhaps?

          4. This post has been deleted by its author

          5. spold Silver badge

            Re: Um

            Do you mean the german sausage? "Wo ist mein wurst?

        2. The Nazz

          Re: Um

          Probably ranks quite low for fibre intake also.

      2. Martin Summers

        He could be dictating it for reasons you use dictation software for? I've known them use US spellings of things when the language is not changed.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Just because he lives in Hull doesn't mean he couldn't be an American or from some other country where 'fiber' is the accepted spelling.

        Or just a typo....

        1. TRT

          Full fibber.

  7. Fazal Majid

    Deceptive marketing

    I find it astounding the Advertising Standards Authority actually endorsed OpenReach resellers deceitfully calling their shitty DSL offerings as "full fibre". How is a consumer supposed to know what is true fibre vs. fake?

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Deceptive marketing

      ow is a consumer supposed to know what is true fibre vs. fake?

      One is provided for in your cereal, and one is provided for by OpenReach.

      1. Fatman
        Joke

        Re: Deceptive marketing

        <quote>one is provided for by OpenReachRetch.</quote>

        FTFY

  8. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Well, KCOM benefits from it's universal service area not including tiny farms in the arese end of nowhere 100miles from the nearest exchange, so *of* *course* they've managed to get 100% coverage. If Scotland went independent, TE&W would complete 100% well before Telecom Ecossia.

  9. Ian 55

    That's paying £4.5k per customer

    How many years do they expect to get that back via overcharging them?

    1. Tom 38

      Re: That's paying £4.5k per customer

      Kcom's MD Sean Royce in interview with BBC:

      He says the benefits of full fibre are already being felt, with £469m of incremental economic activity in the area that would not have happened without it.

      From another piece:

      Research from tech research consultancy Innovation Observatory found that Lightstream had contributed £469m of economic wealth to Hull and surrounding areas.

      This includes £234m in extra Gross Value Added to the region’s economy and £204m in salaries of additional staff employed in local businesses whose growth has been attributable to Lightstream.

      Small businesses which run from home have also benefited from in excess of £1m in additional revenues.

      My lady friend runs her mainly online businesses from home, and when she moved in with me and my FTTP she found things which previously took her an age to do - like uploading content, backups etc - took significantly less time - things which she had allocated an afternoon to get done would be done in under an hour, freeing her up to do more productive things.

  10. Adair Silver badge

    Actualitie

    For what it's worth, I'm sitting just outside Hull and on KCom's fibre network. Broadband speed check reports:

    Ping Download Upload

    13 ms 77.33 Mb/s 9.77 Mb/s

    ... but then that includes the trudge through my Netgear router which may not be helping.

    Anyway, speeds are perfectly adequate for domestic usage at Adair Towers.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only problem with living in Hull, is that you are living in Hull

  12. SimonC

    I went to uni in hull in 2002-2005, and KCOM were the spawn of the devil at that time, reaping the benefits of their monopoly. While the rest of the country could get decent broadband, we, in the city centre, were given a 1.5mbps line. Connecting it to multiple computers was forbidden in the TOS. It would frequently go down or stop working for multiple days with no explanation.

    They sent us the wrong password for the initial modem setup, and blamed us for it. The guy that set it up wasn't moving back into the house for a couple of weeks either, fortunately their state of the art call-center was able to help us when one of us pretended to be the guy (since they wouldn't talk to anyone else) on the phone - despite him answering the security question 'what is your date of birth?' with 'I don't know' and 'what is your mother's maiden name?' 'I don't know'. Fortunately the third question was 'what is your cat's name?', and one of us happened to know he was called Tibbles, so that was enough - 'Thank you Mr Smith, how can I help you?'.

    The price was extortionate compared to the rest of the country, the service was total garbage, and there was *no* alternative. I sent a letter to OFCOM asking if there were any alternatives to KCOM, and they replied back with a generic 2 page letter ignoring my question about how KCOM is *not* a monopoly... which wasn't what I asked. When there's no alternative providers, it's a monopoly, though...

    Since those two years of hellish unreliable internet, I will NEVER trust KCOM ever again.

  13. Couldbe

    meh

    I'd be more impressed if it were fibre to the home - fibre to the cabinet still means homes are saddled with the quality of the phoneline to the cabinet.

    1. Timbo

      Re: meh

      True...but at least the copper or aluminium pipe is a lot shorter going to the nearest green box on the corner, compared to the previous option which is direct to the local exchange, which could be some km away.

    2. Adair Silver badge

      Re: meh

      In Hull it is fibre all the way.

      1. andolly53

        Re: meh

        I'm sat within the Kcom boundary on a 400Mb fttp circuit and it doesn't miss a beat

        I could if I wanted upgrade to a 900Mb minimum but it doesn't warrant the additional cost.

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