Virgin Media 'considers' KCOM takeover in Hull

(Image credit: Virgin Media)

Virgin Media is reportedly considering a takeover of Hull-based telco KCOM in a bid to accelerate its nationwide network expansion.

The Daily Telegraph says Virgin Media executives are encouraged by a major profit warning issue by KCOM in November, caused by the poor performance of the company’s B2B unit, but that such discussions were at an early stage.

Virgin Media Hull

Virgin Media is currently in the middle of the single biggest network expansion in its history. The £3 billion ‘Project Lightning’ originally aimed to expand coverage to 17 million properties by the end of 2019.

While some of these premises will be added to the cable network, Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) will play a significant role. The acquisition of KCOM would accelerate deployment and give Virgin Media access to an entirely new market.

BT and Virgin Media do not operate telephone or broadband services in Hull due to KCOMs historic advantage in the city. As a condition of its licence renewal in 1914, KCOM was required to purchase the local telephone infrastructure, whereas other regional telecom groups were absorbed into the General Post Office (GPO), which became BT.

A key difference, aside from white phone boxes, is that KCOM has used Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) for its superfast broadband rollout, rather than the Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) deployed by Openreach.

This means large parts of the region has access to some of the fastest speeds in the UK, but critics argue the company enjoys a monopoly – even though it is required to provide wholesale access to its infrastructure.

Virgin Media declined to comment on the reports, while KCOM has been approached.

Steve McCaskill is TechRadar Pro's resident mobile industry expert, covering all aspects of the UK and global news, from operators to service providers and everything in between. He is a former editor of Silicon UK and journalist with over a decade's experience in the technology industry, writing about technology, in particular, telecoms, mobile and sports tech, sports, video games and media. 

Latest in Pro
Isometric demonstrating multi-factor authentication using a mobile device.
NCSC gets influencers to sing the praises of 2FA
Sam Altman and OpenAI
OpenAI is upping its bug bounty rewards as security worries rise
Context Windows
Why are AI context windows important?
BERT
What is BERT, and why should we care?
A person holding out their hand with a digital AI symbol.
AI is booming — but are businesses seeing real impact?
A stylized depiction of a padlocked WiFi symbol sitting in the centre of an interlocking vault.
Dangerous new CoffeeLoader malware executes on your GPU to get past security tools
Latest in News
Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con up-close from app store
Nintendo's new app gave us another look at the Switch 2, and there's something different with the Joy-Con
cheap Nintendo Switch game deals sales
Nintendo didn't anticipate that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was 'going to be the juggernaut' for the Nintendo Switch when it was ported to the console, according to former employees
Three angles of the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M4 laptop above a desk
Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) review roundup – should you buy Apple's new lightweight laptop?
Witchbrook
Witchbrook, the life-sim I've been waiting years for, finally has a release window and it's sooner than you think
Amazon Echo Smart Speaker
Amazon is experimenting with renaming Echo speakers to Alexa speakers, and it's about time
Shigeru Miyamoto presents Nintendo Today app
Nintendo Today smartphone app is out now on iOS and Android devices – and here's what it does