Eclipse Broadband, previously known as Eclipse Internet and Eclipse, is a UK provider of business technology services previously based in

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

and Hull, East Yorkshire where it was owned by KCOM Group PLC. Eclipse supplies connectivity, cloud and communication services to support businesses. Its three product portfolios include ADSL, fibre and leased line broadband services; wide area networks as a managed service; backup, Lync, Hosted Exchange and data hosting services; and communication services, including both fixed line and IP-based voice. Eclipse Broadband is now a part of the Global 4 Group.

History

''Eclipse Internet'' began in 1995 as a South West internet service provider utilising an 0845 dialup number. In 2001, Eclipse launched its first

Broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

product, based on BT's wholesale

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

service. In 2004, the company was purchased by KCOM Group PLC for a total of £12.5 million. £9.5 million was paid in cash, whilst the remainder was paid in KCOM Group PLC shares. In 2005, Eclipse began trials of a combined

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

and

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

service. Eclipse also rejigged its broadband packages into three new packages and removed its fair use policy, the only restrictions on use now being the amount of data downloaded. In 2010, Eclipse gave an official response to proposals by

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and mail, postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-rang ...

to investigate

Net Neutrality Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering User (computing), users and online content providers consistent tra ...

in the UK. In 2021, KCOM sold the Eclipse customer base to Global 4 Group who serves the customers as Eclipse Broadband Limited.

References

External links

* {{Telecommunications industry in the United Kingdom Internet service providers of the United Kingdom