ISP Cuckoo Set October for UK Full Fibre Broadband Launch

UK ISP Cuckoo has today announced that they’ll soon be launching their first Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based home broadband package(s), complete with speeds of up to 1Gbps (Gigabits per second), from October 2021. But unlike most other providers, they’ll do so on a monthly rolling contract.

At present the provider, which only launched into the UK market a year ago, is currently only offering a single package based off Openreach’s slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) technology – via the 80Mbps (20Mbps upload) tier, which is promoted as offering average download speeds of 67Mbps on a monthly (rolling) term for £29.99 per month (plus a £60 one-off setup fee including a router and phone line rental).

The good news is that their current service will, in October 2021, be joined by an FTTP product. But at present it’s unclear whether they’ll offer a single gigabit speed package or several speed options. The statement then goes on to state that “currently only 15% of UK homes can get full fibre” (actually it’s 24%), “but Openreach and CityFibre plan to increase coverage to 40% of homes by the end of 2022 and then 85% of households by 2026,” which some may view as being an indication that Cuckoo might harness both platforms.

The provider also claims that, once it goes live, they’ll be the “first” ISP in the UK to offer full fibre on a monthly rolling contract, which rather overlooks the fact that several providers already do this (e.g. B4RN, Pulse8, Jurassic Fibre and several others).

Alexander Fitzgerald, Founder and CEO of Cuckoo Broadband, said:

“Our mission from the very beginning has been to disrupt the broken broadband market, dominated by a large few who rip off their customers. As part of our mission to make broadband simple, flexible and fair, we are now launching a super fast full fibre connection for our customers. We are also the first ISP to offer full fibre on a monthly rolling contract, making broadband work for you, not the other way round.”

The announcement comes shortly after Cuckoo completed a fresh funding round in April 2021, which saw them raise £4.3 million in order to help fuel their future growth (here). The ISP also differentiates itself by taking 1% of each bill and using it to help spread internet connectivity into challenging places, such as conflict zones, natural disaster sites and developing communities (customers choose the project).

UPDATE 2:22pm

Cuckoo informed ISPreview.co.uk that, in terms of supplier(s), they want to be “multi-bottom layer” but did not outright confirm that both CF and OR would be used. However, they did confirm that they only intend to launch a single FTTP package, which is an interesting approach to take. We’ll have to see how a rolling monthly term impacts their ability to price competitively at speeds of 1Gbps (assuming that’s the tier they adopt).

The provider has also corrected their full fibre coverage figure to 24%.