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.

I'm surprised that in 2025 where interest rates aren't zero that the investors in these companies put up with interruptions to taking orders, having paid for the network to be built.

Thanks for the updates.

From my side I wouldn't mind if OR and Hey Broadband (also local) dig up the road so long as one of them gives me a better connection than <30Mbbps FTTC I currently get.

Despite my initial fobbing off by Swish someone more senior in the Builds team subsequently replied saying they are sending out contractors to desilt some of the ducts nearby to see if they can connect the road.

Sounds like things heading in the right direction but I note the other post that now Cuckoo are doing the orders for Swish and not taking any so that's another problem.

Well sign-ups are open again, now via Cuckoo. I put in my own address, where I have a Swish-branded, Swish-built, Swish-installed 900Mb symmetric connection and it says they can't provide me service. Same for my neighbours who don't have a Swish contract but were previously able to sign up. Tried a few addresses on the next street that has Swish and Openreach fibre available and Cuckoo only shows Openreach-based contract options. Classic.

In reply to a post by Morfik:

“ 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.”
...
Would be interesting if anyone has better timelines?

The response you have had is frank and accurate: "we don't have any plans to build."

It's not what you wanted to hear, but it's "better" (in the sense of more accurate) than the misleading response you got last year.

The altnet cheap capital gold-rush has gone.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The response you have had is frank and accurate: "we don't have any plans to build."

It's not what you wanted to hear, but it's "better" (in the sense of more accurate) than the misleading response you got last year.

The altnet cheap capital gold-rush has gone.

I understand in the current higher interest rate and higher cost environment build work has slowed down massively but it’s not true to say all the alt-nets have completely stopped / will never build again. There’s an article from yesterday talking about a rollout beginning elsewhere in the country:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/10564-lightspeed...

The question is more whether Cuckoo will build again seen as their strategy seems to have changed. In my case they already did so much work that the cost to get another 50 potential customers isn’t that high.

In reply to a post by gkw:

Well sign-ups are open again, now via Cuckoo. I put in my own address, where I have a Swish-branded, Swish-built, Swish-installed 900Mb symmetric connection and it says they can't provide me service. Same for my neighbours who don't have a Swish contract but were previously able to sign up. Tried a few addresses on the next street that has Swish and Openreach fibre available and Cuckoo only shows Openreach-based contract options. Classic.

Apparently Cuckoo don't plan to onboard new customers on the network built by Swish until the end of 2025.

In reply to a post by Morfik:

The question is more whether Cuckoo will build again seen as their strategy seems to have changed. In my case they already did so much work that the cost to get another 50 potential customers isn’t that high.

Whilst the apparent direct cost to connect a few more potential customers (and turn 20% of them, max, into actual customers ) might not be high, the opportunity cost for APFN could be huge if they've shifted strategy away from any new on-net connections - a big diversion from what they believe they need to do to be long-term viable.

I feel your pain, believe me. Jurassic strung right down my lane, MSTs on the poles, a tiny bit of civils on an A road left to get onto the network. But it won't happen, probably ever.

Thought I’d give a quick update on the current situation

After managing to get lucky by a build manager picking up my emails to Swish Support there was a flurry of building work done over the past few months. Eventually the manager confirmed the build was now ready and I got a generic “Swish is now available” email.

The problem as others suggested is now getting an order through. Swish no longer take orders at all. Swish properties don’t show up on the Cuckoo website so no joy there. The last communication I got from the build manager suggested raising an order manually is possible and Cuckoo would contact me. They never did so I tried calling them and am again stuck with generic call center staff saying orders should be available by the end of the Year….

The most information I could get is “the exchange needs to be migrated to Cuckoo” to take orders? Any clue what this actually means? Are they just changing the routing of the connections? Replacing Swish kit with Cuckoo kit? How long should it really take?

Sounds like Cuckoo are working to getting all the back office admin systems; aka Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) which includes ordering, billing and network ops directly under their existing management systems.

This isn't a trivial task, so may take them some months to complete and test etc. You can only wait until they are ready unfortunately.

Thought I'd give one final update to this in case anyone else is in the same situation.

After not getting anywhere for a weeks eventually someone from Swish (or maybe APFN / Cuckoo) called me and said they could manually put an order through on the old Swish platform. A couple more weeks passed when out of the blue I got asked to submit a Direct Debit to Cuckoo. A day after that I was booked in and had the Fibre installed last week,

Install went fine but activation took longer as the Swish back office insisted to the engineer the road wasn't live when he'd clearly connected me (and some other neighbours). This was resolved in a few hours and I'm up and running. Interestingly I was given Swish branded kit and am on a legacy Swish package not a Cuckoo one.

So if you're trying to order Swish etc. the trick is try and go via Swish Support not Sales and not Cuckoo and hopefully you'll have some luck.

Good workaround and result.

Still however sounds like their back office integration is non-existent / a bit of a mess.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Good workaround and result.

Still however sounds like their back office integration is non-existent / a bit of a mess.

They're planning to migrate swish customers over to cuckoo by mid-August, maybe after that new customer orders can go though a normal process. They've said it should be seamless for most customers, though those on full 1000mbps will drop down to 900mbps