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back to article It's a Hull of a thing: Kcom takes a break from 8-year sales slide

Telecoms provider Kcom stemmed its declining revenue for the first time in eight years, reporting growth of 0.4 per cent to £349.2m for the full year 2015/16. However, operating profit fell to £6.3m from £50.9m mainly due to increased investments, compared with the previous year. That was mainly due to its fibre roll-out in …

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  1. paulf
    Unhappy

    Eclipse residential

    I never really understood why they abandoned new residential users (about 2 years ago) via their Eclipse residential brand. I've been with Eclipse for about 13 years (starting on 500kbps ADSL, now on FTTC) - they're not the cheapest but I've always found them pretty reliable and with good service. They do occasionally feck things up but they always sort things out and you speak to someone in Exeter that IME isn't reading from a script.

    For now they're supporting existing customers but if they give up on that too I'll be considering A&A or Zen (who seem to be closest in service and customer satisfaction).

    I suppose they either didn't have much confidence in their product, or in their ability to pull customers away from the mass market where TalkTalk style "6 months free then £5.99/month - min 3 customer data breaches per year and scripted Mumbai call centre" offers are king.

    0 0 Reply
  2. msknight

    Sadly, I'm one case there they didn't feck things up, but didn't take the necessary steps to get OpenReach to un-feck it.

    Nearly eight months in to a hellish back and forth situation, I switched to PlusNet, who after a few weeks, got an engineer out who determined that there was noise on the line... and then told me that there were people working on the cab between my village and the exchange.

    They knew there was a major problem on the service the whole *$*£*%@# time.

    OpenReach still have to sort the line out on a more permanent basis, though. That won't be a quick job.

    0 0 Reply
    1. paulf
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      I'm not surprised Openreach were more than happy to fall over themselves fixing the problem ASAP once the fault ticket came from BT Yorkshire rather than a competitor

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Not true - I currently work for Plusnet and I can say that even though Plusnet is owned by BT Group it is treated as a separate entity when it comes to any interaction with BT Openreach.

        From personal experience Openreach don't offer any preferential treatment for faults/repairs or new installations when it comes from Plusnet.

        I have several colleagues who have worked for competing ISPs who have corroborated this as well.

        Anon for obvious reasons.

        0 0 Reply
  3. Wiltshire

    Once upon a time, when the internet was a new and strange thing, basing an IT start-up firm in Hull made a lot of sense. 1) because it wasn't BT and you could get things done quick, 2) of the unlimited-time phone calls for 5p. Which with a PSS connection via ISDN and the KoH telephone exchange was as close to unmetered as it was possible to get.

    A tour of the telephone exchange was a treat in good-old-fashioned technology along side the very newest. The DC battery banks were big enough to provide a UPS for the whole of Hull's telephone network, and looked big enough to jump-start the QE2.

    IIRC, the long-distance infrastructure went down (what was) British Rail tracks, not depending on BT.

    All in all, I'm left with a feeling of opportunities lost.

    2 0 Reply
    1. paulf
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      It wasn't just with KCOM itself where opportunities were lost. The local council made a fat pile of cash from privatising Kingston Communications (as was) and proceeded to (as I understand it) squander the lot such that they now have little or nothing to show for it.

      0 0 Reply
  4. randymcstab

    Death to KCOM

    The last company I worked for decided leave the Hull area. top 5 reasons was KCOM.

    The City is awful enough with out these idiots.

    0 0 Reply
    1. PBTag
      Reply Icon

      Re: Death to KCOM

      Hull is not that bad, I agree KCOM are not the best however they are in no way shape or form the worst.

      I have lived and worked in Hull all my life (nearly 50 going on 25!) and I deal with KC on a very regular basis, some of the things they do are really good, some are really bad, although in the most part they are good.

      One benefit for us from 'ull is we get FTTP (where currently available) I personally have it as a residential customer and for £40 PCM I get 250/100, I actually get 300/150.

      I have not quite got to grips with their costing for this though, £40 is not much more than I was paying for ADSL, which was circa 15/2 and for a few quid more I get FTTP, the cost of infrastructure and installation of FTTP cannot be cheap, I mean the fibre enters my premises, unlike BT's FTTC where the XXX metres are copper, so I have only to assume it is just long term, although that being said, City Fibre, who they sold their non Hull and East Yorkshire business are actually laying fibre in Hull, firstly I believe for three and then EE (although I may be wrong don't shoot me!) as well as laying lots of additional dark fibre which another ISP has the right to sell and light up, this other business currently offers the old OTA internet connection, so the future will be interesting, to say the least.

      Anyway, again, Hull isn't that bad even though it is actually called Kingston and the river is called Hull, hence Kingston upon Hull, we are just lazy and call it Hull, well really lazy and call it ull ..

      Have a good weekend y'all

      1 0 Reply

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