KCom is gearing up to deliver a £17 million switchover of 170,000 phone customers from copper to fibre in Hull.
The huge project, first revealed as part of the firm’s £100 million commitment to a full fibre future back in September, is now getting underway. Faults on the 40-year-old network are no longer being repaired, with switchovers now the remedy, ahead of an exchange by exchange approach from April.
The telecoms provider aims to have the whole city transferred within 18 months - with no impact on phone numbers or bills - but a significant scaling down of the company’s environmental footprint. Energy consumption is anticipated to fall by 50 per cent for the £100 million turnover operation.
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It builds on a decade-old approach that has put Hull at the forefront of internet connectivity.
Tim Shaw, chief executive, said: “97 per cent of homes already have fibre, but when we rolled it out in 2012 it was purely to drive faster connectivity rather than bring other services on board. As technology has evolved we can see how we can run voice over the fibre network much more efficiently. We weren’t ready then, and nor was industry.
“We built the fibre network before anyone else, and we’re now ready to move. The copper network is very energy hungry. Installed in the 1980s, it is 40 years old and coming to the end of its natural life. If it was rated it would be ZZZ compared to what we are now used to.”
The move by the Carr Lane team will see a leaflet campaign in the new year, ahead of local approaches, with a strong commitment to support businesses and avoid disruption.
“As a region, if we’re trying to be carbon neutral, if we have a system that is far more efficient, then we need to use it,” Mr Shaw said. “There are a long list of environmental reasons why we think this is the right thing to do, but we also have faults four times more often on copper.
“Behaviour has shifted as well. We’re now more used to video calls, texting more, the home phone’s value has changed. But there are a lot of customers who still rely on it - it is a generational thing. For voice-only customers, we will make sure everything is working on the day we migrate. Everything remains the same, the same phone number, everything, the change is behind the scenes. It is a better environmental solution, and we see it as a massive impact for the region. We’re all focused on Net Zero, and this takes a huge amount of carbon out of our footprint. It is a great opportunity for us.”
The work will be done by existing teams, with some additional engineering support should peaks emerge, with partner companies or further employment options.
“It will all depend on how many customers need the support,” said Mr Shaw, who arrived from BT three years ago.
“Consumer moves will be much faster, and if it is a case of finding solutions for businesses, that may be harder. We are being as flexible as we can in helping migration. Businesses are more reliant on legacy kit. We will be having conversations around how we support migration, what they are using services for, with a lot of interest in how they become more digital. We’ll be putting our effort into helping. They will get the benefit of more digital investment and we get the benefit from supporting customers in that long term relationship.”
Migration is described as a very simple process, with a dongle plugged into the optical network terminal, the box on the wall the router is plugged into - and the phone then into that - rather than the wall box. Voice only customers will need engineers to install that as well. Between 10,000 and 12,000 customers are already using it with the transformed rare legacy business, that had been publicly listed prior to a huge buy-out by Macquarie, following long-held local authority ownership.
“It is something we’ve been doing, but are now increasing,” Mr Shaw said. “We’re not fixing the copper network now. The migration starts from April next year. It will be done geographically; there are 13 exchanges around the city, so we’ll be working one exchange at a time. We have been testing it for some time with staff trials and users, to make sure it is as simple as possible. Because we have got 97 per cent of the city on fibre, it is so much easier than for others.”
The former BT man knows that percentage of customers already on fibre is substantially higher than virtually any other location - making it quite a pioneering move. And that just leaves the question over the copper that criss crosses city streets from 13 exchanges.
“There is a lot of copper in the ground and from an environmental perspective it is less damaging for us to get it out, rather than mine it in Africa,” Mr Shaw said.
“We’ll start looking at how we do that, and a main driver will be the circular economy and how we can feed it back in. There is plastic down there too, so it will be about how we can get the materials into recycling plants, and we’re talking to companies about that.
“We have engineers who will have seen copper from cable to grave too, they've been part of something special.”
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