KCOM

Most of the UK gets its phone line and broadband over a network that traces back to the Post Office and BT. Hull does not. The city has had its own telephone company since the early 1900s, and that company, now called KCOM, is still headquartered in Hull, still runs the local network, and is still the reason the city’s phone boxes are cream rather than red. For anyone interested in the digital and tech sector in the Humber, it is the obvious starting point.

What KCOM does

KCOM is a broadband, telephone and IT services provider. Its core business is the fixed-line network covering Hull and parts of the surrounding East Riding, over which it sells home broadband under its Lightstream brand, business connectivity and telephone services. It also provides IT services to business customers.

The history explains the shape of the business. Hull Corporation was granted a licence to run a municipal telephone system in 1902 and opened its first exchange in 1904. Every other council-run operator in Britain was eventually absorbed into what became BT; Hull’s never was. Hull City Council sold its final stake in 2007. In 2019 KCOM was bought by Macquarie, the Australian infrastructure investor, for around £627m.

The full-fibre network

Between 2012 and 2019 KCOM replaced the copper connections across its Hull footprint with fibre-to-the-premises, and in October 2019 it announced that Hull had become the first UK city with complete full-fibre coverage, at a cost of around £85m. Roughly 200,000 homes and businesses gained gigabit-capable connections years before most of the country. The network now reaches around 305,000 premises across East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, around 200,000 of them in Hull.

That head start has not gone unchallenged. Rival builders including CityFibre and MS3 have since overbuilt large parts of the city, and industry reporting in early 2026 suggested most Hull premises now have access to at least one alternative network. KCOM’s long near-monopoly is, in practical terms, over.

The ownership situation

KCOM is in a period of change, and anyone considering a job there should go in with their eyes open. In February 2026 Macquarie was reported to have appointed advisers to explore a sale, and in March 2026 the company announced an agreement with lenders and shareholders to restructure its finances, an arrangement that keeps open a sale, a sale of assets or a wider reorganisation. Its accounts to March 2025 also included a write-down of around £530m in the value of its assets.

Fibre networks are long-lived assets and whoever owns KCOM will need people to run it, but the company’s structure, and possibly its name, may look different in a year or two, which is a fair topic to raise at interview.

Scale and typical roles

KCOM describes itself on its careers pages as a team of around 600 people, though it does not publish a breakdown by location, and reported employee numbers vary depending on which entities are counted. The bulk of roles are in and around Hull:

• Field and network engineers — installing, maintaining and repairing the fibre network and customer connections
• Network and infrastructure engineers — designing and running the core network and data services
• Software, IT and cyber security roles — building and securing the systems behind the service
• Customer service, sales, finance and HR — contact centre, commercial and support roles

As a broad indicative guide, UK telecoms field engineers typically earn around £26,000–£34,000 depending on experience, with network, software and security specialists often on £35,000–£55,000 or more. These are general sector ranges rather than KCOM figures.

Apprenticeships and early careers

KCOM has run engineering apprenticeships as a deliberate way of building a local skills pipeline. In 2020 it took on ten engineering apprentices across field, network, software, infrastructure and cyber security roles, working towards vendor qualifications from Cisco and Juniper alongside their day jobs. Intake numbers vary and the current careers page does not describe a live cohort, so check KCOM’s careers site directly, and look at Hull apprenticeships more widely for telecoms and IT routes.

Working for KCOM in Hull

KCOM is a genuine, locally headquartered technology company with a real network to run, which is rare in the region; the uncertainty is around ownership rather than the underlying work. This profile draws on public reporting and KCOM’s own announcements, not on staff accounts. For the wider picture, see our Hull jobs and careers guide.