Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, recently met with KCOM CEO Dale Raneberg to hear about the expansion in the telecoms giant’s work and to discuss plans to bring ultrafast ‘Lightstream’ broadband to “sluggish” parts of his constituency.
The meeting followed completion of KCOM’s build in Withernsea, which means that 95% of properties in the town are now ‘passed’ by new, fibre broadband that could offer speeds of up to 900Mbps. Ofcom, the regulator, defines superfast broadband as anything over 30Mbps (enough to download a film in around 4 minutes) while ultrafast speeds are over 300Mbps.
In the meeting, Mr Raneberg committed to connect Withernsea residents to the new infrastructure for free, if they take out one of KCOM’s ‘fibre-to-the-premises’ packages.
In response to a Government request to boost access to better internet speeds, particularly when more people than ever before are working remotely, KCOM have introduced a new, cheaper ‘Flex Package’ for people in receipt of benefits such as Universal Credit, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Pension Credit.
Graham said, “It was a real pleasure to meet with Dale, just after KCOM have finished their extensive build in Withernsea. The pandemic has shown just how important it is for people to have decent internet as families battle over access to their emails, video calls and Netflix.
“The Government wants to rollout gigabit-capable broadband to 85% of the country by 2025, and I’m keen for my constituency to benefit sooner rather than later with the help of KCOM. It’s also great news that the Government has relaunched its voucher scheme, which can offer up to £3,500 off the cost of building the infrastructure.
“I’ve been in touch with parish councils already, and I’d encourage any residents in rural areas who want to see faster speeds in their area to get in touch with me at [email protected].”
Currently, just over 95% of premises in Beverley and Holderness benefit from access to superfast broadband, while two-thirds have a FTTP connection. Nationally, these figures stand at around 97% and 22%.
Mr Raneberg added, “It was a pleasure to meet with Graham and hear that he shares our enthusiasm to cover Beverley and Holderness in full-fibre broadband.
“We want to give local residents the fastest possible speeds and we’ve shown this with recent builds in Withernsea, North Newbald and Bishop Burton. This has been helped by a recent expansion of our in-house engineering teams, which is creating more skilled jobs for local people.”
