Significant Job Cuts Set to Strike Workers at UK Broadband ISP Cuckoo
Internet service provider Cuckoo, which is the consumer broadband outlet for the associated AllPoints Fibre (Fern Trading) network – as well as several third-party full fibre operators (Openreach, CityFibre), has confirmed to ISPreview that they’ve had to put a sizeable proportion of their current staff under notice of potential redundancy.
The redundancy notice (staff were told via email), which has been seen by ISPreview, informed employees that the broadband ISP was committed to “rightsizing our business” and “improving profitability” over the coming year (e.g. acquiring customers at the “lowest cost“, retaining them for as long as possible, and reducing operating expenses).
In line with all that, the provider has been conducting a review of their business and has now begun a related redundancy consultation that will begin on 28th July and last for at least 45 days before any redundancies take effect (take note that some people may voluntarily agree to leave before this period has elapsed).
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A Cuckoo Spokesperson told ISPreview:
“Over the past 24 months, we’ve brought together four Internet Service Providers (ISPs) into one group, now running off a single system stack and a simpler operating model. With this complete, we’ve taken a close look at the business to see if we’re structured effectively for growth in an increasingly competitive market, in a way that still allows us to provide great broadband to our customers at a fair price.
From this review, we have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce the size of our team. It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly, and we know it will have a real impact on people who have made a huge contribution to our journey so far.
We would like to thank every individual affected by today’s news for their hard work and dedication, and our priority now is to support them through this process.”
Cuckoo did not clarify to ISPreview how many jobs would be cut, but the government’s legal requirements suggest that such lengthy consultations are usually only used when 100 or more employees are expected to be impacted. This is significant because Cuckoo is believed to employ a little over 200 people.
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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I’m surprised that Cuckoo got to the point where they had 200 staff. Maybe they took more on as changes came about as a result of them being acquired, but their pitch in the early days was that they could run very lean as they only really needed to have a system in place for ordering connectivity from TalkTalk and placing router orders with whoever their distributor was, and were trying to limit the amount of staff time required to keep things going.
Cuckoo today is simply the brand name chosen out of the four readily available at the time for the retail part of the three merged-and-then-split Fern Fibre Trading companies. Well, three, because obviously Jurassic Fibre wouldn’t work for a national brand.
What Cuckoo was doing before Giganet bought it, and when Giganet owned it, is history. The CEO (ex-Shell Energy Broadband) came across from Jurassic. Although there’s clearly been some (failed) attempt to maintain its internal culture.
It’s a branding I’ve never understood – the cuckoo throws your babies out of the nest and puts its own eggs in there.
All of their noble intentions since they were founded, seem to have been jettisoned / sold off.
They were good until they forced us out (as an ex FTTC customer) and moved us onto Home Telecom.
Glad to be on FTTP on a differently ISP now!
This company seems to be a complete shambles. Cuckoo still showing GPON speeds for our property despite APFN XGS-PON being available for last 18 months.
Truly a shadow of its former self. No wonder the founders jumped ship.
How awesome is it to see Octopus / Fern sticking to their business model?
Again, anyone who wants to know more about what it is really like to work for Octopus should read the reviews on Glassdoor.
Quite an eye opener.
I think people need to remember this is real people with families etc impacted by poorly run businesses in financial difficulties.
Personally I just wish everyone well and hope they get looked after properly.
It’s not just Cuckoo things are happening in the same way in APFN perhaps smaller scale/less obvious – but either way I think it’s important to be kind and wish people the best, support on LinkedIn where we can..
@Friendly Reader: Totally agree with you, hopefully better times with a better company, are ahead for the 100 people about too be made redundant.
Government needs to step in, Industry is a mess
And probably turn a mess into a calamity. Politicians have less expertise in running companies than the existing management.
Perhaps if Cuckoo allowed new customers to sign up to their own network they could bring more revenue in.
I am on a Giganet 900/900 FTTP connection, and got moved of to cuckoo months ago. If I try and order it for my postcode I only get the option for a BT connection – their own network is totally ignored.
Ditto: as per my comment above.
It’s the same with ALL of their Fern Trading Fibre businesses, I personally am on former Swish Fibre infrastructure where it is the same story as yours GPON only, as CityFibre stopped short – there are also areas nearby where Openreach or CityFibre have not built FTTP, and even though ‘APFN’ have infrastructure their and customers, the checkers advise ‘we’re coming soon’… I was told that Cuckoo contractually committed to both companies, before Fern decided to merge the customers to Cuckoo and the infrastructure to APFN.
Is that just poor business decisions, or a story for customers, or actually perhaps the company is being sized and sanitised for sale – probably to CityFibre..
They’re sugarcoating the truth. They’re not downsizing, they’re outsourcing their entire customer care team to Bosnia. Cuckoo used to have unique selling points like no mid-contract price rises, UK-based customer service and they’ve lost all of these now. They’re no different to the likes of Virgin or Sky, just without the scale. Cuckoo will crash and burn within 12 months.
Seeing the roles of the ex-JFL colleagues appearing on LinkedIn, my first guess was outsourcing/offshoring customer care. Looks like I guessed right.
The customer base will be sold off within 6 months. Boils down to poor leadership and lack of financial oversight by Fern Trading. They’ve let their headcount spiral without getting the customer numbers in. Shame, there will be some great people working there who will be out of jobs soon.
Early 2022 ‘Swish Fibre’ turned our Bucks town upside down with a presumably huge and hasty fibre build. Swish became part of Cuckoo… And you’re up to date. Installed 2022, never activated, never turned on, not for sale.
Extremely weird situation.
Your experience is far from unique, really give the impression of being a total s***show of a company.
Same where I am . Swish allowed their sub contractor CG utilities to dig everywhere , countless roads dug up because they could not access the joint user poles Openreach were using for their own FTTP build which was completed 18 months prior . They must of spent a fortune here and now you have no sign of any connections and you can’t order it using any postcode , you just get the Openreach packages .
I can beat that…. Joined Swish last year and have been migrated to Cuckoo. No issues with service, generally happy. However…. when I put my address into the Cuckoo website it says it is not available in my area… LOL no wonder they are in the hole.
This will sadly become the norm in the industry. Hope people are able to walk away with a decent package. All set up for cityfibre to buy allpointsfibres network now. Equity or cash?
Anyone has to be an improvement!
I’m dubious about an altnet also having an ISP arm. Yes it gets the full margin from the customer’s subscription but the costs of running an ISP are large (with only a small number of subscribers) and other ISPs may be reluctant to sign up in competition with the altnet’s ISP. I suspect the better business model is to focus on being a wholesale-only network provider.
Sadly this is happening all over the place, with the amount of NI that companies have to pay out, they are cutting staff left right and centre, where I work is no different.
I feel for people affected by this.
Unfortunately it’s been poorly led from the start hence why they disposed of the Group CEO, Group CFO and Cuckoo CEO. This lyes squarely with them and ‘some’ of the Cuckoo Leadership team. Also the way it was announced was a tough pill to swallow; half hour of positive company performance followed by redundancy announcements. Thanks for that
Sadly all of customer care and tech team are being made redundant and outsourced to a company called DDC in Bosnia.
When DDC were brought in during the migration of giganet into cuckoo, all the staff were given assurances that they were protected and DDC would never replace them. They’re there to do the backlog and admin work to get migration over the line. Now the whole customer care arm and tech support team (as well as others) are being outsourced to DDC but they maintain “it’s to keep the quality of service to the customer” no company who has outsourced their customer care has ever kept the level of service.
One exec even said they didn’t need a Tech support team. After working there and relying on that team and seeing the level of detailed networking they do, I can’t see that’ll be the case.
Expect complex internet issues to take months to resolve now. I’d probably look for a new ISP
I would say they knew exactly what was coming from the very start, someone is getting a massive bonus for reducing the size of their team. In less than a year people quietly disappeared numbers reduces from around 350 to 200 then they announced was it 140 going? Of the remaining 60, 57 are probably looking for new roles
Unionise, join CWU UTAW branch.
Sadly it’s a bit late for us now
I think this has been on the cards for a while now. Cuckoo management have been silently chipping away at USP like mid contact price hikes, and UK based customer support.
I’m pretty sure the dream was to rival the big 4, which is laughable now with hindsight.
Leadership are clueless and someone needs to kick them out of the nest of things are to ever improve.
As a previous commenter said, this screams of lowering costs ready for sale. And, when it comes to flogging customers Cuckoo has form!
*Side note. The word rightsizing needs to be banned, it’s so offensive, say it like it is…I think that is literally one of your behaviors.
I was just about to sign up to a new Swish Fibre 24 month contract. I looked at OpenReach options but it seems they (Sky, BT, etc) only offer Partial Fibre or FTTC so slower speeds.
It seems Swish Fibre is the only FTTP option at the moment.
Does anyone recommend any other options?
Should I not go with Swish based on what is happening?
Or if I should just wait until OpenReach have built their FTTP infrastructure out in my road (could be a while before they do, 12months maybe)?
Well an update, I have no choice now as phoned Swish/Cuckoo and they said they are not onboarding any new customers until possibly the end of the year while they transition their existing customers. They said they could onboard new customers but only on OpenReach infrastructure but since OpenReach haven’t laid their FTTP infrastructure yet to my road then they cannot.
So even though Swish/Cuckoo infrastructure is all there, no new customers.
So no option until then for FTTP, or until OpenReach lay their FTTP infrastructure in which case I can choose other providers or Cuckoo.
Bit of a joke really.
The company is in severe financial difficulty with only another 12 months of support from fern trading (check out companies house).
Around 20 million in losses reported for last year and barely any new customers to assist with getting them out of this hole.
The good will from investors has worn thin and this is the reason they need to lay off roughly around 80-90% of their staff members to try and survive.
Cuckoo as a company is a broken mess and the service they provide is even worse.
Want to remove an additional router from your package?
You can’t.
Want to regrade your package?
You can’t.
Tick tock Cuckoo, your time is up.