Yes, this time a bit of deserved praise for KCOM.

I was relatively recently contacted in an unofficial capacity by a friend of mine who at the time happened to be working for KCOM. He’d been tasked with the job of looking online for what he called ‘negative press’ about KCOM and was asking site owners politely for it to be removed / issuing takedown notices where applicable. Imagine how peeved he was to see that one of the top search results was mine!

For those who haven’t read the entire contents of this site (why would you?) I acknowledge I have in the past been openly critical of KCOM where performance and service has been lower than expected, especially considering the fact that there is still no real true ‘physical’ alternative to KCOM’s services unless you use over-the-air providers. Although I refused to take anything down from here as all content was true and matter of fact, I did mention that one day I might follow the previous posts with a more up to date account.

So here it is.
Recent times have been a great deal better as a KCOM customer and I feel it only fair to give credit where due.

It seems that maybe KCOM finally accepted that their ADSL network in Hull is, in places, dreadful with speeds available no higher than 2.5Mbps as was reality in a previous dwelling of mine.
This is where their rollout of ‘Lightstream’, their Fibre-to-the-Home FTTH saved the day.

Since living in the patchy 2.5Mbps area of KCOM’s ADSL network, I’ve been fortunate enough to move to a much nicer, much newer part of town where we’re offered use of KCOM’s Lightstream branded FTTH internet service. KCOM started rolling this out to premises in and around Hull a couple of years back where internet was previously shaky and coverage in Hull and East Yorkshire is still expanding today.

Pricing and packaging aside (I’d still rather have a fibre internet-only service with no compulsory phone line rental), their internet provision has been exemplary. Whereas previously on the old ADSL network there always seemed to be a tradeoff between speed vs reliability, the FTTH service has been nailed-up and as solid as any provider I’ve experienced outside of KCOM country. In about a year and a half of using the FTTH service I’ve only had one outage which off memory lasted no more than about an hour. Not bad for over 13,140 hours of service (do the maths yourself)!

In short …

Kingston Communications, KCom, KC, KCOM, however you decide to brand yourself this week … well done. You’ve turned a cynical serial KCOM-complainer to a happy fan and customer.

Thank you! 🙂