Swish Fibre Reviews

Swish Fibre has been generally pretty good. If you're like most people, and just want an internet connection to be able to game/browse/stream, then it certainly does the job. However, there are a few things that should be considered by anyone who has a complex home network setup, and likes to tinker or has a homelab.

Firstly, while Swish do offer a "static" IP, it's not truly static. It is a publicly routeable address, however it does change ever so often - it's more a "sticky" address than a true static address. Still, it's a lot better than being behind the default CG-NAT setup. Additionally, when you change package, or some to the end of a fixed term and want to renew, you may have a few weeks with a CG-NAT address.

Secondly, there is no IPv6. Despite this being a promised feature back in 2022, it's still not here. Poor form from a challenger ISP - especially as this should never have been a problem in the first place if they just started the right way.

However, points in their favour include being able to use your own equipment (as in, plugged directly into the ONT), which not every provider allows (eg, Virgin Media, trooli, etc).

Overall, it will tick most boxes for most people, just not power users.

I signed up to Swish Fibre as soon as they became available to me, and overall I've been pretty happy with them. I'd definitely recommend them over Openreach-based networks, but I'm not sure if they'd be my AltNet of choice (e.g. the fact that they're vertically integrated is a bit of a shame -- it would be nice to have a choice of ISPs over the physical network).

Support tickets used to receive rapid responses, have deteriorated significantly over time – I now struggle to get replies to emails.

The speed of the service is excellent. My package is described as 900 Mb/s but in reality I get around 1,150 Mb/s. Swish's network uses XGS-PON so they could launch multi-gig packages at some point (I'm a little surprised that they haven't already).

Swish's pricing is a bit on the high side. I was lucky to get 6 months free (on an 18 month contract), but this promotion has now ended. In particular I'd like to see a package to address the budget end of the market (e.g. Community Fibre offers 40Mb/s for £12.50 per month, and this is available to everybody). They also no longer offer 1 month contracts, which is a shame -- in my mind giving customers the option to leave shows confidence in the quality of the product.

Overall the services are pretty good, but it's a shame that their network lacks IPv6 (in 2024 it feels like table stakes).

I had BT 36 Mbps FTTC for many years, and generally found it to be satisfactory. I decided to move to Swish because I was out of contract with BT and didn't want to sign up to a new BT fixed length contract; also the rising price of BT Broadband exceeded the Swish price.
My house is in a private road, that was always going to make access more difficult - getting permission to dig trenches etc. Swish genuinely seemed keen to be my provider, even though getting to my house was always going to be more challenging than from a public road. Using existing BT route was explored and found not to be viable due to collapsed trunking. Fortunately access was possible from a nearby pole and only took a couple of hours from the 2-man team arriving to having a working service.
EDIT: I'm now a year in, and still no complaints; I get the full advertised speed, am not aware of any outages, so I am very pleased I moved to Swish. I am now out of contract, and to my surprise, if I sign up for 18 months, I will get all the perks of a brand new customer - 6 months free and a free router of the latest type. Currently (Apr 23) Swish are offering their fastest speed for £50 instead of £75 per month.
The MESH module originally provided is esoteric - a Plume pod - https://www.plume.com/serviceproviders/products/homepass/. I believe a Linksys Velop router is about to be offered as an alternative.

I've recently moved to Swish Fibre FTTP from Sky FTTC - they made an offer that no one could refuse, so far based on the experience I've had I'm incredibly impressed.

From the initial phone call right through to connection day, they have been very good, admittedly there was a delay in going live, but this was due to circumstances beyond their control and they did keep me up to date, so the sales team, aren't sign you up and forget, they really care and will keep you up to date.

Installation appointment team are fast and efficient, when the install team arrived to put fibre into the house, they discuss the entire install and make sure you are happy with everything, we had one small problem and the engineer wasn't going to leave until he saw the speeds I was promised.

EDIT: Well it's now been nearly 10 months and speeds and service have been solid, but the customer care I raved about has taken a complete nosedive, very long hold-times and someone answering the line "with hello, hello, then silence then hello" plus they're penalising customers on monthly contracts and not offering long term legacy customers better prices, yes the service is awesome but the customer care is beyond awful which I'd never thought I'd say about this business after my sign up experience. My concerns are as they get more popular - will they able to cope?

I was interested to see a new physical ISP in the area and like the economy / performance trade off that they have chosen by using XGSPON. Signed up as interested earlier in the year and pleased to have been connected in late July.

Install was delayed by a day or so due to the engineers asking if they could visit another customer to fix a problem and only delayed when I said I didn't mind this. When the team arrived they were amazingly efficient and took less than an hour to run a new cable from the pole to the house, down the wall and into the desired location. This included all the testing and the team altering the install to suit my needs.

Over the last three months it has been rock solid giving 400MBps upload and 3-400Mbps download even at the busiest times. Good low latency, though the IPv6 service has not been launched yet.