My whole relationship started pretty badly with KC within a week of moving to Leven. I’d just moved from an incredibly reliable 2Mbps cable connection from Telewest (now Virgin Media) and was now on a 1Mbsp ADSL connection which was already proving unreliable. I then received a flyer through the post stating how KC was providing the fastest internet connection in the country. I promptly replied telling them this was in fact untrue, but I never heard anything back.

Since living in the KC area, I’ve watched other areas of the country improve their connection speeds whilst I’m seemed to be stuck around the 2Mbps connection mark. In the 10 years since I first signed up to my first ISP I’ve gone from 0.5Mbps to 2Mbps. Compared to the rate at which other changes occur within the computer industry this has been very painful. I’m certain many of you share these gripes, but recently things have changed. We’ve all been given some hope. Granted for some of you it’s probably not coming fast enough, but KC have an ageing network they have to upgrade and things like this don’t happen overnight, but the important thing is that the investment is happening.

As part of getting Lightstream I excitedly tweeted quite a bit about it. However I’m still getting asked quite a few questions, so this post hopefully explains things a bit more.

First contact

You probably all saw the first initial press release on Lightstream and checked availability in your area pretty quickly.  I certainly registered my interest.  After that press release my first contact from KC was via a letter stating that engineers would be working in my area and that they may well need access to the connection box on the side of my house.  Over the next few weeks I saw the odd few vans in the area but nothing more.

The excitement builds

After about another month or so I got another letter from KC stating that Lightstream was now available in my area and I should contact them to book an appointment. I did this as soon as humanly possible. I asked the lady on the phone about the best option for me, and I decided to go for the largest bundle. I figured I could always downgrade if it wasn’t proving value for money. For those of you asking about the price of the full bundle, which includes your phone calls etc, it is £48 per month. (It’s actually £38 per month for the first 3 months). This is the price for fibre to the home. For those who have fibre to the kerb there is a slightly reduced price as that can quite reach the 100Mbps, but only get 80Mbps.  It is my understanding that KC are pushing to have fibre to the home as much as possible, as this is better from a maintenance point of view.

The closest appointment I could get was about two weeks after my phone call. I was informed that engineers would be needing access the connection box outside of my house, but I wouldn’t need to be around for that.

One slight thing of note here, even though I registered interest and KC rang me to ask for a mobile number, they never actually called me about getting a Lightstream appointment. In fact I’m not certain how the registered interest data is being used.

So many vans and cables!

About a week and half before my installation the streets in my vicinity seemed to be filled with Vans (some KC and some were clearly contractors for KC). Every time we saw a van it was generally around a manhole and they were pushing cables in, lots of them!

The box of the side of my house was finally accessed around the same time.

The installation

The installation itself was pretty quick, as would be expected as the ground work had already been done.  The engineer drilled a whole into the house, pushed the fibre through, and then connected the optical network unit.  Quick point here, you’ll need two power sockets near by, one for the optical network unit and one for the wireless router.  These are installed as standard by KC, so you don’t need to worry about having the right equipment yourself. For those of you interested, the router installed was a Netgear N300 Gigabit router.

Giving it a whirl

Before leaving, the engineer did a speed test with his PC that was directly wired into the router and he was recording a connection of around 140Mbps.

The only speed tests I’ve run so far have been through a wireless device and I’ve been getting around 70Mbps. Never thought I’d see the day where the wireless aspect of the connection would be the bottleneck!

To give it a proper test, that evening I downloaded a 4.5GB VPC from Microsoft’s servers. It was very quick. Once of the 700MB sections came down in 7 minutes. Whilst doing this download I also decided to stream a 4oD programme. No buffering occurred at all. So there is definitely plenty of bandwidth to play with.

Other things I’ve tested including streaming a HD movie. Again the stream started instantly and I experienced no buffering. Looks like I can finally start to put away some of those old DVD’s that were taking up too much room in my house.

Happy Customer

I always said whoever got fibre to my home first would get my money. So KC did it and I’m a very happy customer. It’s doing exactly what I expect. It’s been stable, although granted I’ve only had it just over two weeks. It’s been fast and I can finally realistically stream content to my TV knowing I’m not going to be frustrated by buffering.

The biggest thing for me, as a business owner, who sometimes works from home, is that I’m getting around 17Mbps upstream. That’s probably a bigger deal than the 100Mbps. Uploading large files are no longer such a time consuming part of the day.

As for the 600GB monthly limit, I’m going to do my best to get close to it, but I suspect I’ll fall some way short.

Fingers crossed the KC Lightstream rollout happens for you all shortly.

It’s all static

One final point. It was asked at the last Hull Digital Developer group if the Fibre packages were static IP addresses or not.  I’ve since found out all the Fibre packages use a static IP address.

So, it’s arrived. KC Lightstream is here and being totally honest, it looks amazing. How about up to 100Mbps?!

Kevin Walsh, the Chief Executive from KC announced:

Our fibre deployment is the start of something special that local people can feel proud of. At its heart it’s an investment in the future of Hull and East Yorkshire, and, I believe, a catalyst for change that will help to transform the region’s fortunes and improve local lives.

The Government has recognised that superfast broadband will play an important role in the UK’s future economic success; helping to attract new businesses, stimulate the digital sector – a key driver of growth and wealth creation in regional economies – and helping councils and other public sector bodies to deliver services to residents more efficiently.

Kevin is a great ambassador for the region and passionately believes in the potential for the Lightstream service. Having talked to Kevin over the past three years or so, the Lightstream launch has been a firm focus for the company and the planning process has been a long and hard journey, culminating in the official launch today.

The headline figures are pretty amazing – upstream speeds up to 10Mbps and downstream up to 100Mbps. More than enough to satisfy speed freaks across the region. KC have looked at both the consumer and business areas, with various packages available.

For business, the packages start as £25.00 per month and go up to £100 per month, with the speed ramping up and also the usage allowance.

One big question I had was around the difference between the Business service and the Consumer one… from what I gather this download speeds are the same but the services for businesses include bigger usage allowances and faster upload speeds which is fair enough. I’m sure there will be some overlap though…

There is a very thorough FAQ for the new business service here.

Certainly, something like the homeworker option looks terrific and a really good price too. For many of the Hull Digital community who are freelancers, developers and work from home, this kind of speed is going to be very welcome. Upload speeds of 5-10Mbps depending on package will be even more warmly received!

Moving onto the consumer offering, there are a number of different options. Bundles and stand alone packages, with the bundles being the best value. You need to pop in your postcode first of all to see if you will be able to get the Lightstream service in the coming weeks… If you are in the right area, the website shows the packages available. See below:

The 100Mbps package is available for some areas which have FTTH (Fibre To The Home). Some postcodes show the 80Mbps package as this won’t be available and will be FTTC (Fibre To The Curb).

I’ve seen a few comments about the fact that it’s not unlimited download, but anyone who is giving that as a negative, is in my opinion, looking to find something to complain about. A 500 GB monthly allowance is HUGE. I use the web daily. A lot. Now I’m not certain of my data usage, but it’s no way near that. 500GB is very fair.

The big question – who can get Lightstream and when?

The people of the Grovehill area of Beverley will be the first to receive KC’s lightning fast broadband service this year, with customer installations starting in two weeks’ time on Monday 6thFebruary. Other installations in Beverley will include the Grange Way, Lockwood Road, Butt Lane, Old Manor Lawns, Lincoln Way, Poplars Way and Norwood areas.

Further fibre installations in 2012 are planned for the following areas (subject to detailed engineering surveys):

Priory Park business park in Hessle
Barnsley Street, Belmont Street and Buckingham Street off Holderness Road
A number of East Yorkshire villages including Skidby
Flats and apartments in areas including Hull city centre
Kingswood in the north of Hull
Parts of Greatfield estate in east Hull, as well as other areas of east Hull
Victoria Dock
Parts of Sutton-on-Hull
Parts of west Hull around Pickering Park

Overall, I am seriously impressed with Lightstream. They needed to do this, no question, but from the looks of things, we are going to have an amazing service in Hull, and at a very reasonable price. I’ve seen very few negative reactions from people, with the vast majority being very positive. The only thing to have really ticked me off is that I cannot have it yet! Now where’s Kevin’s number…

Main press release can be found here.

FAQ page is here.

This post looks at the response to the Digital Britain Report, as well as asking how this effects us in our region. Hull Digital was interviewed on the BBC Radio Humberside breakfast show which you can listen to below:

Earlier in the week, the final Digital Britain report was released to an expectant Great Britain. It has generated a huge amount of coverage, which unsurprisingly, is very mixed. Rory Cellan Jones from the bbc (http://twitter.com/ruskin147) has posted on the their technology blog here, and has attracted a huge number of comments, universally negative towards the Government’s report.

What really stood out was this:

This morning, as he visited the Crystal Palace digital television transmitter, the Prime Minister made an extraordinary promise. Just hours before the publication of Digital Britain, he said this:

“Britain’s going to lead the world. This is us taking the next step into the future, being the digital capital of the world, making the necessary investment.”

This is categorically a BLATANT lie and more evidence that this report is woefully inadequate and 10 years too late. How we (the UK) can expect to be the “digital capital of the world” with the target of 2mb broadband is not only misguided, but frankly, plain rude, arrogant and misjudged.

Do they, the Government, really think that the UK population are that stupid to believe this?

Adam Westbrook, a local media journalism commentator and reporter summed it up very well on his recent post here:

The Promise: 2Mbps broadband for everyone (and “action separately to address the issue of next generation broadband”)

Result?: epic fail. While broadband for everyone is great, 2Mbps [...buffering...] broadband is inadequate for [...buffering...] the growing needs of digital journalism including [...buffering...] the huge demand for [...buffering...] video on demand. Separate action to [...buffering...] investigate faster broadband looks like [...buffering...] the buck being well and truly passed.

With the icing on the cake being that we, the public are being asked to fund this next generation broadband with a £6 per year tax levy. The £6 amount is neither here or there, but it is the fundamental principle that WE are being asked to pay for something that Governments should have done 10 years ago.

Finances, the jaw dropping truth

It has been estimated that it would cost around £27bn to install fibre country-wide. That you might say is a whole lot of cash.

But, to put this in perspective, we spend around £1bn per year just in Iraq.

Yes, £27bn is a big figure, but surely, a necessary one? Just think of the business benefits that it would bring? Anyway, as mentioned before,  4 words come to mind. Too little, too late.

So what do the Digital Britain measures include?

• A three-year National Plan to improve Digital Participation
• Universal Access to today’s broadband services by 2012
• Next Generation fund for investment in tomorrow’s broadband services
• Digital radio upgrade by the end of 2015
• mobile spectrum liberalisation, enhancing 3G coverage and accelerating Next Generation mobile services
• robust legal and regulatory framework to combat Digital Piracy
• support for public service content partnerships
• a revised digital remit for Channel 4
• consultation on funding options for national, regional and local news

There are lots of worthwhile areas of focus here, but it still comes back to what the vast majority of people relate to, and that is broadband speed.

How does this effect us here in Hull?

The simple answer is that we just don’t know yet. There are many questions to be asked, one being do we need to pay the £6 tax / levy for NGN (next generation network) investment? Being in a unique, and frankly, very unpopular positon here in Hull, with our local ISP / teleco, Kingston Communications / Karoo there would need to be written and concrete assurance that something was also being done here to catapult us onto NGNs.

What is certain that with Digital Region and NYnet, there is an understanding that something MUST change and soon.

It is also hugely encouraging that there seems to be a real groundswell in feeling, people-power, and concern in the area, with Hull Digital and Humber Mud starting to become noticed, and actively participating with the Council and Hull Forward to ensure that we are not left behind.

Your say

The Digital Britain report is a cornerstone in our future, not only personally but also for business.

We want to hear your views, not only about our region and how the report effects us, but what you think about the country, and is it enough?

What is certain, it remains very controversial, and it is clear that Gordon Brown is still using a 56K modem.