Broadband ISP Cuckoo Withdraws UK FTTC Products Due to Cost
Cuckoo (Giganet) has quietly become one of the first Openreach based UK broadband ISPs to withdraw their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) based products from sale for new customers (existing users remain supported), which leaves them only able to offer Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) plans to over 10 million premises.
The change, which was spotted during a routine update of our ISP Listings database, came as somewhat of a surprise because FTTC is still Openreach’s most widely available “superfast” (30Mbps+) capable service – covering around 29 million premises. As such, many providers on the same underlying network are likely to continue offering it until FTTP has achieved a greater level of overall coverage.
According to Cuckoo, the reason they’re “reluctantly saying goodbye to our fibre + copper ‘Fast’ package” is because “the wholesaler we use to bring this speed to you has increased their prices, which means our ‘Fast’ fibre + copper package would be too expensive for you and us” (this could be a reference to both Openreach and or a third-party wholesaler in-between).
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The providers say they’ve thus chosen to focus on only selling their FTTP plans, which they add will “provide our customers with faster speeds and more reliable connections, and with the rollout of full fibre across the UK moving at pace, we can connect more people than ever.”
Ofcom has allowed Openreach to spread the cost of investment in deploying FTTP across a wider group of consumers (e.g. allowing them to recover some investment costs from both copper and fibre products), which has in turn helped to push up the prices of older copper products – often at the same time as they’ve been discounting full fibre lines (e.g. Equinox 1/2) to encourage take-up.
Nevertheless, the choice to shelve FTTC does dramatically reduce Cuckoo’s reach for new customers, owing to the big differences in availability between the two technologies. On top of that, their cheapest plan now appears to start at £39.99 for 100Mbps (20Mbps), which may reduce the appeal for some consumers (i.e. there’s nothing to fill the void at £29.99 for those with smaller budgets).
However, the ISP has also revealed that they’ve “recently partnered with Giganet, CityFibre, [Swish Fibre] and [Jurassic Fibre] to increase our full fibre availability, so look out for extended coverage in the coming months,” so their package options are likely to expand in the near future.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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£39.99 for 100Mbps (20Mbps) full fibre is taking the ****
Oh 100% considering Giganet are selling 160/30 for £32
But anything for over £30 for 100 is a rip off 100%
See the threads over on Thinkbroadband about the nonsense Giganet has been subjecting its customers to recently. You get what you pay for.
Couldn’t of put it better myself mate…
£40 for fibre 100 is very steep. I am paying over tenner less than that with BT and get phone line as well!
They were expensive with FTTC, I had a look at them when I was looking for another ISP.
Is the router these provide any good?
How is it compared to the eero pro 6 talktalk provide?
Its a fairly unexceptional Technicolor one. I haven’t used it but the Eero 6 Pro is almost certainly better.
They were talking a TalkTalk business package for their fttc product, so does this mean that TTB have increased their wholesale prices? It will be interesting to see if any of the other TTB resellers increase their prices.
Mark, is finding out if TTB have put up their prices something you can do?
Yes, they have.
How on earth they got FTTP 100/20? Openreach don’t selling this product?
It’ll be 115/20 as that’s what most sell
Interesting — until now I believe Swish Fibre and Jurassic Fibre have been vertically integrated. I guess this is the start of the merger of the various Fern Fibre brands.
In my Area Portsmouth full fibre has been installed but not yet connected. I’ve been looking at Toob they are only charging £25 for 900mb up and download speeds. Seems to good to be true. But at that price is is worth a punt especially when my current ISP Talk talk contract is up in September…
People seem to think that £30 is expensive for 100mbs these days, given the rate of inflation and how the world is so messed up, pre covid it was quite common to get 63mbps for £30.
Cukko seem to be one of the good providers, hopefully they have made the right choice by future proofing things
They offer 100Mb or 1Gb – that’s it. I was with them until January and the only reason I left was because there wasn’t a 300 or 500 package. If they’re going to survive in the long term I think they need to offer more choice and better value – £54.99 for 1Gb is too expensive in my view. Cuckoo uses TTB by the way for those interested. The company that brought them, Giganet, does offer 500Mb for £37 and 150Mb for £32, so not sure why anyone would choose Cuckoo and pay more when they’re basically the same company.
I put my post code in – being on 900/115 with someone else and all I get is 98mbps it’s really odd
I think its a bit off, ofcom allowed openreach to add to prices in non fttp areas (especially ones never getting OR FTTP) to fund FTTP.
On the flipside however I do accept under normal circumstances companies can do this kind of stuff as normal business practice.
The reason why I signed up to Cuckoo and left BT was because Cuckoo offer 12 month contracts, they also use Intercom messenger for support which means it is easy to get in touch with them. Disclaimer I work for Intercom.
54.99 is a lot for 1Gbps but I paid 59.99 at the start of my term with BT.
Altnets seem to be developing in my area and I can’t wait to grab Community Fibre once they are available or take a contract with HyperOptic if Community Fibre never land.