Kingston Communications PLC is a telecommunications provider based in Kingston upon Hull serving primarily the East Yorkshire area.

The company was formed in 1999 but still managed (validly) to celebrate its centenary five years later [http://www.kcom.com/centenary/].

Its history is an interesting one. On 22nd August 1902, Hull Corporation (part of Hull City Council) was granted a licence to operate a municipal telephone system in the Kingston Upon Hull area, opening its first telephone exchange in 1904 at the former Trippett Street Baths.

At the time, there were a number of such municipal telephone companies around the UK, all of which - with the notable exception of Kingston Communications - were gradually absorbed in to the Post Office Telephone department, which was subsequently to become British Telecom (BT).

Hull s bid to renew its licence in 1914 was made conditional on the £192,000 purchase of National Telephone networks infrastructure. The council gave its approval, securing the future of the country s one remaining municipally owned corporation.

Hull therefore has remained an exception within the UK telephone network being the only place in the UK not served by BT, and is noted for its distinctive magnolia coloured telephone boxes and innovative services, for example becoming the UK s first fully digital network in 1989 using Marconi System X telephone switches (Central Offices or Class 5 Switches).

Since then, due to the relatively unusual nature of its network topology Kingston has also been able to pioneer services such ADSL, Video on Demand and Digital TV.

Kingston Communications was floated on the London stock exchange in 1999, during the peak of dot.com euphoria, and soon found itself in the FTSE 100 group of companies, only to exit the FTSE 100 shortly thereafter.

It now consists of a number of group companies including Kingston InBusiness (formerly Torch Telecom - its business services arm) and Eclipse the Internet Service Provider and has a national SDH fibre-optic backbone.

Because of its very small footprint Kingston is also in an enviable position with respect to predatory behaviour by rival operators. Although it is under the same Ofcom and EU obligations with respect to Local Loop Unbundling etc. the addressable market is so small that the economics do not - by and large - justify entry in to the market.

It has recently started to expand its resdential phone services beyond the boundaries of Hull in to adjacent areas like Scarborough, but its footprint is still minute when compared with that of BT.

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