KCOM has announced that Hedon and Preston are the next locations on its rollout plan for superfast fibre broadband. It has also released details of more than 50 streets in the Bricknell Avenue of Hull where the service will be available to order later this month.

KCOM’s Lightstream service will be made available to more than 5,000 properties in and around Bricknell Avenue during 2016, in streets including Burniston Road, County Road North, Grammar School Road, National Avenue and Fairfax Avenue. Around 3,200 residents in the area will be able to order the service from Wednesday 20 July, with the remainder able to go superfast in September and October.

In Hedon and Preston, 5,000 homes will gain access to Lightstream before the year is out, with around 600 of these able to order Lightstream from the start of August and the remainder between September and December.

Lightstream, which delivers broadband speeds many times faster than standard copper broadband, is already available to more than 75,000 properties across Hull and East Yorkshire. Earlier this year KCOM announced plans to accelerate its rollout of the service over the next 18 months to make it available to around 150,000 properties – approximately three quarters of its network – by December 2017.  By that time KCOM’s total capital investment in installing fibre will have reached approximately £60 million.

Last month Lightstream became available to 4,500 households in around 50 streets in the Holderness Road area of Hull, including Summergangs Road, Westcott Street and Newbridge Road. Since then more than 500 homes in the area have switched to Lightstream or made an appointment to have it installed.

Hull is the only city in the UK where broadband officially described as “ultrafast” – delivering download speeds capable of at least 100Mbps (megabits per second) – is being made available as standard. This is because KCOM is installing fibre cables all the way from its telephone exchanges to customers’ properties. Elsewhere in the UK, fibre cables are typically laid only as far as telecoms cabinets in the street, with copper cable forming the final connection to the customer. The result is slower download speeds that vary according to how far a customer lives from the street cabinet.

Sue Helmont, KCOM’s director of consumer services, said: “In the current phase of our roll-out we’re taking Lightstream to thousands of properties where broadband speeds are slower than average because of the distance to the telephone exchange they’re served by. This is the case in the Bricknell Avenue area of the city and we’re delighted to give customers there the opportunity to go superfast.

“We’re doing all we can to make superfast broadband available to as many customers as possible as quickly as possible. The acceleration of our plans to make Lightstream available right across our network means that throughout this year we’ll be connecting a new household to Lightstream every half an hour.”

The first streets to go live in the Bricknell Avenue area are listed below. Residents in these streets can order Lightstream from Wednesday 20 July by calling 01482 603196 or online at kcomhome.com/broadband. People who have registered their interest in Lightstream in advance via KCOM’s website will receive an email later this month inviting them to take advantage of priority booking from Wednesday 13 July.

Residents can find out if Lightstream is already available at their address by entering their postcode at kcomhome.com/broadband.