On 27/10/2024 22:19, Andy H wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre
package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more
than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment.

Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

My daughter, an accountant, has been working for the group for the last
two years. The 'rationalisation' and mergers are, I understand, just
about concluded, and Cuckoo will emerge as 'The new kid on the block'!

Might well be a good move.

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Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment.

Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

--
Andy H

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Andy H <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre
package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more
than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment.

Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

Have you checked reviews for Cuckoo? I won’t name them but there’s a new fibre provider operating around here that has turned out to be a bit of a cowboy. Openreach (or whatever they’re called) are frequently having to
sort out a variety of problems such as disconnection of service to other providers’ customers. This new provider’s customer support seems a bit patchy too.

--
Cheers, Alan

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Andy H wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

[snip]

Bear in mind that probably whoever you choose, your landline telephone
service will disappear and you will be offered some form of VoIP carried
over the broadband connection. See:

<https://business.bt.com/insights/uk-pstn-switch-off/>

If this is irrelevant to you because you use your mobile for all
incoming and outgoing calls then you can probably ignore the rest of
this post.

If a copper pair is involved in your internet connection then it will
not be very reliable. You might be lucky if your copper pair is very
short and does not pass near sources of electrical interference. For
broadband only a break of a couple of minutes would not normally be
noticeable, but for a voice service carried over that broadband any
break will be very obvious. Sod's law says that such break will always
occur during an important phone conversation, perhaps after you have
been on hold for an hour!

So you should only consider FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) for your
upgrade. Often the marketing spiel from many suppliers does not make it
clear what they will actually install at your location, and even within
a small area FTTP might not be offered to properties adjacent to those
that already receive it! I've only seen my FTTP fail once (for about 36
hours - evidently a fault at some regional switch location, which
affected a good many users)

If the services offered are carried over the Openreach infrastructure
then use a reputable Openreach reseller i.e. not BT but either Zen or
Andrews & Arnold. Normally I would not suggest Plusnet but since you
are with them already ....

For others ask neighbours who already use them. Many will only function
with the router that they supply - sometimes these have an integrated
optical modem, so all bets are off if you want to use your own router
for LAN-to-LAN VPN support or similar. A colleague has Gigaclear, and
the optical termination is gross, like a modem from the 1950s. Also
many use CGNAT which may give you random problems accessing banking
websites or email.

Good luck.

--
Graham J

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On 2024-10-28, Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

So you should only consider FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) for your
upgrade. Often the marketing spiel from many suppliers does not make it clear what they will actually install at your location, and even within
a small area FTTP might not be offered to properties adjacent to those
that already receive it! I've only seen my FTTP fail once (for about 36 hours - evidently a fault at some regional switch location, which
affected a good many users)

If the services offered are carried over the Openreach infrastructure
then use a reputable Openreach reseller i.e. not BT but either Zen or
Andrews & Arnold. Normally I would not suggest Plusnet but since you
are with them already ....

I see Cuckoo are on Openreach's list of FTTP providers but it's not clear to
my ageing brain that they are a formal reseller. The outfit I was talking
about earlier are not on that list although they claim to offer FTTP in my area. I'm currently getting high 60s/low 70s reliable download via FTTC.

<https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/fttp-providers>

--
Cheers, Alan

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Alan B <alanrichardbarker@gmail.com.invalid> wrote:

Andy H <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre
package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie
underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a >> bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. >> Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more
than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment.

Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as
my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

Have you checked reviews for Cuckoo? I won’t name them but there’s a new fibre provider operating around here that has turned out to be a bit of a cowboy. Openreach (or whatever they’re called) are frequently having to sort out a variety of problems such as disconnection of service to other providers’ customers. This new provider’s customer support seems a bit patchy too.

Reviews seem OK, but I just wanted to see if anyone in a known forum had
actual experience of them.

Cheers.

--
Andy H

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Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

Andy H wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

[snip]

Bear in mind that probably whoever you choose, your landline telephone service will disappear and you will be offered some form of VoIP carried
over the broadband connection. See:

<https://business.bt.com/insights/uk-pstn-switch-off/>

If this is irrelevant to you because you use your mobile for all
incoming and outgoing calls then you can probably ignore the rest of
this post.

Yes, for us it doesn’t matter, we use mostly mobile now, the only landline calls we get tend to be scams.

It’s more the landlord, but as you say, it won’t matter before long anyway.

I was more interested in how this lot compare to such as Plusnet, Vodafone,
or EE perhaps.

The lack of silly annual in-contract price increase is appealing (I really
find that one makes me angry).

[..]

Good luck.

Cheers.

--
Andy H

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On 28/10/2024 16:02, jeremy wrote:

On 27 Oct 2024 at 22:19:04 GMT, "Andy H" <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre
package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie
underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a >> bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. >> Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more
than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment.

Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as
my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

Introducing another prospective provider - TOOB have been very active in my specific area (I'm in N E Hants), don't know much about them but am considering using them once my VF contract is up for renewal. Without wishing to distract the conversation away from Cuckoo, would be interested to learn of
anyone's expeiences with TOOB. They seem to be quite south-centric in terms of
coverage with a few more central (Leicester) - but don't know where you are based Andy.

I switched to Toob earlier this year, as soon as they came to the area
and they've been fine. The speeds are excellent: the M1 Macbook Air
managed 600odd MBps up and down over Wifi 6 on the router they supplied,
with them in the same room.

We're re-organising the office room at the moment so I can't use an
Ethernet connection just yet, but I expect to get the 900 they advertise.

Two outages so far: one of 1/2 an hour unannounced last week and there
was an apology email within an hour of it coming back. And an announced overnight (1am to 5am, or similar) a couple of months back.


--
Bruce Horrocks
Hampshire, England

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On 28/10/2024 16:01, Andy H wrote:

Alan B <alanrichardbarker@gmail.com.invalid> wrote:

Andy H <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

I have no problems with Plusnet, and currently on an older ‘standard’ Fibre
package (80/20). Speed is fine (I get reliable 70+Mbps download vie
underground cables). But, it’s pricing policies that are grating with me a
bit.

I suddenly have an offer to renew my current contract at just under
£28/mth. Hmm, or I can go to the 70meg Full Fibre for a couple pound more. >>> Along with the £3 increase every April. It’s that I find so irritating more
than anything, apart from the rather poor offers they have at the moment. >>>
Got looking just to see what’s out there, and spotted Cuckoo. Same price as
my renewal, but for 150meg on FF. And, they have a fixed price contract
term policy to boot. They seem to be a rebranded Giganet.

Any reason not to consider them?

Have you checked reviews for Cuckoo? I won’t name them but there’s a new >> fibre provider operating around here that has turned out to be a bit of a
cowboy. Openreach (or whatever they’re called) are frequently having to
sort out a variety of problems such as disconnection of service to other
providers’ customers. This new provider’s customer support seems a bit >> patchy too.

Reviews seem OK, but I just wanted to see if anyone in a known forum had actual experience of them.

Just recently set up a relativeon Cuckoo. Chose them solely because they
had the least worst of the reviews. :-(

The house is a new build and so had OpenReach fibre already in place.
All Cuckoo had to do was an activation. It all went to plan and on the
agreed date.

Only minor issue is that they supply an Eero router which needs a phone
app to configure. And the app needs to have a data connection in order
to work. So if there is no broadband and no mobile signal then you have
a problem.

Reliability over the last month has been goo - no issues, no need to
call. We'll see when renewal comes round in a couple of years how good
they are.

--
Bruce Horrocks
Hampshire, England

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On 28 Oct 2024 at 08:11:44 GMT, "Graham J" <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:

Andy H wrote:

Considering my next move in the new year, when my contract is up for
renewal with Plusnet.

[snip]

Bear in mind that probably whoever you choose, your landline telephone service will disappear and you will be offered some form of VoIP carried
over the broadband connection. See:

<https://business.bt.com/insights/uk-pstn-switch-off/>

If this is irrelevant to you because you use your mobile for all
incoming and outgoing calls then you can probably ignore the rest of
this post.

If a copper pair is involved in your internet connection then it will
not be very reliable. You might be lucky if your copper pair is very
short and does not pass near sources of electrical interference. For broadband only a break of a couple of minutes would not normally be noticeable, but for a voice service carried over that broadband any
break will be very obvious. Sod's law says that such break will always
occur during an important phone conversation, perhaps after you have
been on hold for an hour!

So you should only consider FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) for your
upgrade. Often the marketing spiel from many suppliers does not make it clear what they will actually install at your location, and even within
a small area FTTP might not be offered to properties adjacent to those
that already receive it! I've only seen my FTTP fail once (for about 36 hours - evidently a fault at some regional switch location, which
affected a good many users)

If the services offered are carried over the Openreach infrastructure
then use a reputable Openreach reseller i.e. not BT but either Zen or
Andrews & Arnold. Normally I would not suggest Plusnet but since you
are with them already ....

For others ask neighbours who already use them. Many will only function
with the router that they supply - sometimes these have an integrated
optical modem, so all bets are off if you want to use your own router
for LAN-to-LAN VPN support or similar. A colleague has Gigaclear, and
the optical termination is gross, like a modem from the 1950s. Also
many use CGNAT which may give you random problems accessing banking
websites or email.

Good luck.

This is all very well, but FTTP is just not available to me - the infrastructure is not there and will not be in the foreseeable future. So 80Mb/s synch speed it is.

I'm not complaining - it's quite fast enough for me. Just an observation.

It was even worse for my daughter, ten minutes walk down the road. She could not get more that about 15Mb/s download and no prospect of anything better before 2026. She got fed up in the end (she and her husband both work from
home quite a lot) and went to Skylink.

Old John.
--
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

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On 30/10/2024 08:14, John Hill wrote:
[....]

This is all very well, but FTTP is just not available to me - the infrastructure is not there and will not be in the foreseeable future. So 80Mb/s synch speed it is.

I'm not complaining - it's quite fast enough for me. Just an observation.

I doubt you'd notice a great deal of difference if it was faster, John.

I have taken the steps needed, though, "to keep up" and BT now provided
me with this service at a reasonable cost:- https://i.ibb.co/JBSXB0H/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-09-10-01.png

It was even worse for my daughter, ten minutes walk down the road. She could not get more that about 15Mb/s download and no prospect of anything better before 2026. She got fed up in the end (she and her husband both work from home quite a lot) and went to Skylink.

How expensive is that?!! Have you any idea?

It's certainly something which all narrow-boaters should have! ;-)

--
Kind regards,
David

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On 30 Oct 2024 at 09:20:01 GMT, "David Brooks" <David@nomail.afraid.org>
wrote:

On 30/10/2024 08:14, John Hill wrote:
[....]

This is all very well, but FTTP is just not available to me - the
infrastructure is not there and will not be in the foreseeable future. So
80Mb/s synch speed it is.

I'm not complaining - it's quite fast enough for me. Just an observation.

I doubt you'd notice a great deal of difference if it was faster, John.

I have taken the steps needed, though, "to keep up" and BT now provided
me with this service at a reasonable cost:- https://i.ibb.co/JBSXB0H/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-09-10-01.png

It was even worse for my daughter, ten minutes walk down the road. She could >> not get more that about 15Mb/s download and no prospect of anything better >> before 2026. She got fed up in the end (she and her husband both work from >> home quite a lot) and went to Skylink.

How expensive is that?!! Have you any idea?

It's certainly something which all narrow-boaters should have! ;-)

Oops! Starlink.

See https://www.starlink.com/service-plans

But she gets around 250Mb/s, which is considerably more than was available via OpenReach for any provider.

Old John.
--
Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora - William of Occam.

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On 31/10/2024 08:32, John Hill wrote:

On 30 Oct 2024 at 09:20:01 GMT, "David Brooks" <David@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

On 30/10/2024 08:14, John Hill wrote:
[....]

This is all very well, but FTTP is just not available to me - the
infrastructure is not there and will not be in the foreseeable future. So >>> 80Mb/s synch speed it is.

I'm not complaining - it's quite fast enough for me. Just an observation. >>

I doubt you'd notice a great deal of difference if it was faster, John.

I have taken the steps needed, though, "to keep up" and BT now provided
me with this service at a reasonable cost:-
https://i.ibb.co/JBSXB0H/Screenshot-2024-10-30-at-09-10-01.png

It was even worse for my daughter, ten minutes walk down the road. She could
not get more that about 15Mb/s download and no prospect of anything better >>> before 2026. She got fed up in the end (she and her husband both work from >>> home quite a lot) and went to Skylink.

How expensive is that?!! Have you any idea?

It's certainly something which all narrow-boaters should have! ;-)

Oops! Starlink.

No problem! :-)

See https://www.starlink.com/service-plans

If I was still a narrowboater, I might well have tried the 'Roam' service.

But she gets around 250Mb/s, which is considerably more than was available via
OpenReach for any provider.

That's more than enough I'm sure!

--
David

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