Are Swish / APFN still building?

Does anyone have any insight on this? With the constant mergers it seems build work was largely paused in mid-2023 and whilst previous contact with them has suggested it would restart last year from what I can tell in Farnham it hasn't.

Have tried contacting Swish/APFN/Cuckoo repeatedly but stuck at the call centre stage and never get a definitive answer. The latest press releases seem focussed on re-selling Openreach products rather than building their own network.

Frustratingly it seems my road was dug up back in 2023 with toby boxes put in etc. but the final steps never completed so FTTP never became available.

Don't think so. I made similar comments in this post recently.

At least they finished here, fortunately because there's still no sign of OR building in this neck of the woods, so there's not much alternative. it must be very annoying to have had all the hassle of having all your roads dug up and then not get any service at the end of it. The only bright side is that at least you don't have to open your email every day half expecting to find a message saying "Good news! We are transferring you to Home Telecom who will be pleased to supply their award-winning ADSL service". These guys have form.

Hi I've contacted Swish Fibre recently as I am looking to get their FTTP service. I found it best to email them rather than phone. I would recommend you contact the following address: [email protected]

I sent them my location postcode etc and they are currently looking into what is required to get me connected.

I hope this helps!

Thanks. So I just tried that and indeed got a response but a rather generic one:

“ Regrettably we have stopped building works due to the merge with Cuckoo and we don't have a timeframe when this will be ready for service.”

Previously id managed to get in touch with more senior people at APFN who’d suggested building would resume last year but seemingly they were wrong about that. Would be interesting if anyone has better timelines?

I still see APFN branded vans around but presumably they are just connecting customers where the infrastructure was finished.

Unfortunately Openreach are still more than a year away as my exchange wasn’t listed as being done in the next 12 months only by Dec 2026.

Does the infrastructure sharing between OR and the Altnets extend both ways? OR should at least have an easy job when they turn up and find a lot of work done.

In reply to a post by Morfik:

Does the infrastructure sharing between OR and the Altnets extend both ways? OR should at least have an easy job when they turn up and find a lot of work done.

Was hoping that someone more knowledgeable than me would answer this, but since nobody has..
I think the answer is generally no. OR don't usually use altnet ducts and poles, but there may be odd exceptions. There's probably several reasons. OR has a nationwide infrastructure already, which in theory they know all about, and they plan their builds around this. OR builds are on a different scale from those of most alts, it probably just isn't worth them finding out about, negotiating a deal and then using small piecemeal bits of alt infrastructure in the odd places where they might be able to. PIA is a regulated product: Ofcom compel OR to make their ducts & poles available to rent by altnets, and there's a well established system for doing this. Alts aren't required by Ofcom to do the same, and probably few alts have the necessary standards and systems in place.

Openreach dont use other network providers physical infrastructure, PIA isn’t a reciprocal arrangement, the compulsory nature of PIA only applies to Openreach , no other network provider is required to share their infrastructure with others , so they don’t offer it .

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

Openreach dont use other network providers physical infrastructure, PIA isn’t a reciprocal arrangement, the compulsory nature of PIA only applies to Openreach , no other network provider is required to share their infrastructure with others , so they don’t offer it .

And this is going to cause some issues I suspect in built up areas where OR is "direct in ground" and you have Virgin Media in ducts where telegraph poles are seen as a blight. So is OR going to pay for expensive duct installation when their best return on investment would be 50% of homes passed or less?

Or where an altnet has installed ducting and toby pots to most properties in an area, as in my village. OR copper is overhead or DIG here. We had all the hassle a few years ago of pavements and roads being dug up for Swish fibre, and again this past autumn and winter while eunetworks installed ducting for fibre cable through the village from one end to the other, for no benefit to us locals. If, when OR eventually rock up here to do FTTP, they want to do it all again for a third time, I can envisage some fairly mutinous reactions from residents.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

Or where an altnet has installed ducting and toby pots to most properties in an area, as in my village. OR copper is overhead or DIG here. We had all the hassle a few years ago of pavements and roads being dug up for Swish fibre, and again this past autumn and winter while eunetworks installed ducting for fibre cable through the village from one end to the other, for no benefit to us locals. If, when OR eventually rock up here to do FTTP, they want to do it all again for a third time, I can envisage some fairly mutinous reactions from residents.

Mutinous locals in villages? Are these the same ones that complain about how bad their internet and mobile service is, then have the audacity to complain when the enabling infrastructure need to be installed.

The EU networks thing was explained quite succinctly in that thread. Not sure it bears any relevance here other than NIMBYism quite frankly.

Not only are they not building, they aren't taking new orders either. The sign-up flow on the website now lands on https://www.cuckoo.co/join/register-your-interest/swish , which says:

In reference to www.cuckoo.co/join/register-your-interest/swish:

We are migrating our service to Cuckoo, one of the UK’s fastest growing broadband providers. They believe in the same things we do – fast, fair and feel-good broadband. Whilst we prepare the nest, we aren’t taking orders but if you leave your contact details, we’ll be back in touch as soon as we are ready to fly.