Hull has the fastest internet connection in the UK after announcing it has city-wide full fibre broadband coverage.

KCOM, the company behind the city's seven-year roll-out said around 200,000 homes and businesses in the city and surrounding area now have access to ultrafast speeds of 1Gbps.

It means Hull is "the first full fibre city in the UK", KCOM said, something enjoyed by only 8% of the country overall.

That puts the East Yorkshire city six years ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's target of giving everyone in the country full fibre connectivity by 2025, the firm added.

The project has cost the city £85m but the rewards have dwarfed the investment.


Tech consultancy Innovation Observatory claimed that overall the region benefited by more than £469m between 2012 and 2018.

The Hull and East Yorkshire economy grew by £234m in extra gross value, while £204m came in salaries paid to new staff employed in local businesses whose growth can be put down to Lightstream.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, small businesses run from peoples' homes have also benefited - to the tune of more than £1m in additional revenues.

Hull City Council leader Stephen Brady said "businesses in Hull can be confident that they can work faster and more efficiently".

KCOM managing director Sean Royce said his company was proud it had delivered on its promise to customers of the fastest broadband in the UK.

By putting the region "at the vanguard of the UK's digital economy", they had, he said, allowed households to "stream, surf and play seamlessly online", while businesses can "compete on a truly global scale".

KCOM said it achieved it by installing full fibre across all connections, in contrast to the rest of the UK, where British Telecom has rolled out fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), where the final connection to homes comes down a copper cable.

Its much more expensive Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology is a pure, full fibre-optic connection running all the way to the user's home or business, it said.

"We decided that was just not future proof, copper wasn't suitable for the fast data rates of the future," Sean Royce said.