Cuckoo

Hi all,

I’ve been lurking the website and forums for many years (decades!), but I’m finding it really hard lately to research ISPs so decided to register and hopefully some kind folks can help with my questions..

My Sky contract is coming to an end and I’m looking to move to a mid tier/bottom end of premium ISP. I noticed Cuckoo offered some reasonably priced FTTP products and they include a decent router (Eero Pro 6E), they also have good reviews on MSE for customer service. Further research though tells me that things may have gone downhill and I’m very confused by it all.

If they booted out a bunch of BT Openreach customers earlier in the year, why are they still offering products based on it?

There’s talk about parent companies (giganet?) and TalkTalk LLU, can someone explain in simple terms who they actually are?

Does anyone have any feedback in terms of their performance, reliability, congestion (outside of the OR network)? Sky have been OK, but once or twice a year there will be some kind of routing issue or unannounced maintenance around midnight and it’s starting to get a bit frustrating. I’d rather pay an extra £5-10/M for something more solid.

Many thanks in advance,

This may help - https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/01/fern-t...

I was (am?) with Swish fibre and cannot complain. The service has been 99.9% available and always gives me the 900/900 speed I pay for.

Latency on the BQM has increased recently but cannot see the increase from 5ms to 10ms on my side so expect it to be a BGM issue.

Thanks for the input.

I think I’m getting confused trying to understand which ISPs are currently ‘good’ performance wise, what choices are actually available (via Openreach) and how people are comparing latency and performance.

Was looking at IDnet yesterday, but I understand they’re using Zen backhauls (which is supposedly higher latency and poor single thread speeds). I used Zen over 20 years ago and they were considered one of the very best?

If I order Cuckoo using Openreach product, what backhauls would I be using? How much of it is Cuckoo’s own?

I'm on their own infra and the package I have is 900/900 (usually <5ms latency) which is not something available on OR so what package are you looking at? If it is asymmetric then likely an OR offering.

I was under the impression they solely used their own infra but maybe they have branched out since the re-organisation.

Single thread speedtest

Edited by smouty (Wed 09-Oct-24 12:26:49)

There’s no alt-net fttp here, so I am just looking for Openreach based products. But not all providers using Openreach are the same, so I’m trying to learn how do I go about understanding which ones are better?

Look else where, after the really poor handling of some of their customers (on the Openreach network) being forced over to a company called Home Telecom you really can't trust them not to do it again.

Cuckoo is owned by Fern Trading who have a bunch of broadband businesses.

Edited by PCJM40 (Wed 09-Oct-24 16:18:01)

I would be very wary of moving to Cuckoo as PCJM40 has said they did their reputation no good at all with the removal of some or possibly all of the Openreach supplied customers and trying to automatically switch them to Home Telecom. A lot complained and were allowed to leave and find a new supplier. This was in February this year. Cuckoo Shock

Strangely in September they changed their tune (excuse the pun and announced that they had a new deal with BT Wholesale to supply Openreach FTTP services again. Indeed I have checked a nearby address which I know has OR FTTP and Cuckoo are saying it is available.

I don't think I would trust them much, who knows what will happen next.

In reply to a post by SubspaceEddie:

There’s no alt-net fttp here, so I am just looking for Openreach based products. But not all providers using Openreach are the same, so I’m trying to learn how do I go about understanding which ones are better?

Same as with other things you buy: asking existing users, reading online reviews etc, and it depends on what you mean by "better", i.e. what's important to you.

I am with Aquiss, one of the smaller providers, and they are very good for customer support: they are technically competent, you can raise tickets online, and they answer them very quickly. I also get static IPv4 and IPv6 which is important to me, but may not be for you.

Price examples are £45/month for 300M (for me this is the sweet spot) or £55/month for 900M. There's no setup charge, the first 6 months are half price, the contract is only 12 months, and there are no in-contract price rises. This is the sort of no-nonsense approach that I approve of.

Note that you have to provide your own router, which is one reason for the short contract length. That also suits me fine.

I’ve been researching by reading posts here and on an isp review forum, plus comments on other social media and tech forums.

What’s clear to me is that the waters appear much muddier these days - it’s been over 10 years since I shopped around for a subjectively reasonable quality ISP and everything has changed. Many ISPs pooling resources or belonging to parent companies makes things even less clear. Aquiss being associated with both CityFibre and Entanet, for example.

And it’s the same for almost all ISPs I read up - everything is a rabbit hole and I’m getting a bit lost!

What I mean by better is: Demonstrably good or excellent performance with regards to speed, latency and overall uptime. An ISP where (outside of the BTOR network) they have a generous and well controlled capacity buffer that avoids congestion. They should have sensible geographical routing and resilience in place for peer failures. There should be zero to minimal packet loss even at peak times. Am I asking too much, as these things certainly used to be possible to search and find in days now long gone? Should I just accept almost everything is now homogenised?

Aquiss does seem a reasonable taster option though, with the 6 month half price deal and short 12 month contract. I also prefer to supply my own router and I like the idea of a status page and ticket system. I feel confident I won’t be taken through all unnecessary hoops or ignored should I actually ever have any issues.

In reply to a post by SubspaceEddie:

Aquiss being associated with both CityFibre and Entanet, for example.

I just want to be clear for anyone reading this, to clear the waters so to speak, that Aquiss is NOT linked (parent company) to either CityFibre/Entanet in anyway. We are independent private limited company, which has remained the case since Aquiss was founded.