back to article KCOM hands network management to BT

KCOM has scaled back its ambitions again and will concentrate on selling managed services to corporates after outsourcing its the management of its network assets to BT. The company formerly known as Kingston Communications pitched the deal as extending its "network reach through access to BT's national network", with BT's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They'd be more successful if they bothered to pick up the phone...

    I tried to migrate a customer to Eclipse last week. But I had a requirement I needed to check first.

    Their contact number was "experiencing a high number of calls". So I used the "call me back" bit of the website. Then the "email me back" bit of the website.

    24 hours later, I'd still had no contact from Eclipse. So I went elsewhere.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Lost in the wilderness

    They are truly lost. They even purchased a consultancy company for over £24 Million a couple of years ago (Smart421) and that consultancy had virtually no IP and the majority of staff were contractors ! The charismatic founder left and now sales are significantly down in that business. It shows KCOM are clutching at straws, strategy is missing.

    What next ? This is a difficult market - look at the difficulties faces by COLT. KCOM could take a lead over BT and Virgin by offering Hull consumers low cost, fast (=>20 Mbit/s) broadband. Alas, I think the company needs new management or at least a new head of strategy. I would think telecomms is core and IT Consultancy is not - alas, they paid a premium and won't get a fraction of the money if they tried to sell off their troubled Smart421 division.

  3. david 64

    But the question is...

    ... do we still have to deal with these utter w@***rs to provision a DSL connection in the Hull area?

    Or can we use BT now?

  4. David Haig
    Unhappy

    What a pity ...

    I liked Kingston - I migrated two companies over to them in the late 90's after BT showed no interest in helping move headquarters building and expanding our WAN across the UK. Kingston came up with an innovative solution which covered a high degree of resilience and gave us a path to migrate the WAN from dialup & leased lines to ISDN and then ASDL as it came on line. Never had a problem with sales or technical and they were pretty proactive in contacting us. They even got the billing right - something BT had been unable to do for years. Always recommended them to other IT Managers over BT

    Left Yorkshire 5 years ago so it looks as if they got a bit too big for their boots recently.

  5. Ian Cleary

    Charismatic founder

    Should think that he would have "left"... the company is over 100 years old :-)

  6. Mister_C
    Unhappy

    KCom too busy

    They're the saddos providing staff for 118800

    http://www.humberbusiness.com/news/KCOM-centre-launches-mobile-phone-directory/article-1082538-detail/article.html

  7. Jon Gibbins
    Stop

    KC alternatve

    David 64:

    Not quite by themselves here anymore, but still the biggest. We use Quickline internet in Hull (over the air broadband) and it's as speedy and stable as anything ... and no, I don't work for them. :)

  8. Gordon 10
    Unhappy

    Shame -

    Personally I love being with Eclipse- shame they cant get the rest of the operation up to that standard

  9. Peter Mylward

    @ ian cleary

    Sorry to be a nit picker, but I believe he was referring to the founder of the consultancy firm, not of Kingston communications, who is indeed dead!

  10. Gavin Bloeman
    Unhappy

    Such a shame

    I used to work there back in the early 00s - they didn't know their ar*e from their elbow back then and it doesn't appear that they have changed much. Whilst there, I worked for "Kingston Internet", "Kingston inbusiness", then "Kingston Communications" all without leaving my desk :)

    Bad management and greed has brought down a company that was loved by many in the Hull area for nearly 100 years.

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