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.