The best people to answer that are our customers themselves.

Here are 12 reasons to take the leap. (We wanted to make it a nice round 10, but there were simply too many...!)

2. You’re fed up with poor customer service

3. You want to know exactly where your money’s going

4. You’d like a seamless getting-broadband-in-new-house experience

5. You want to keep your broadband provider on their toes

7. You want to help get internet to the places it’s needed most

9. You want to have a broadband provider that you can say these things to

11. You want to be inspired to write your first-ever review

12 reasons to switch to Cuckoo

When we launched Cuckoo we promised ourselves that we would use our business to make a difference to the people and the planet around us. With a global pandemic, international refugee crisis, and new humanitarian emergencies developing around the world, it’s more important than ever right now that people have access to the internet.

We created the Cuckoo Compass to help put that right. 1% of each bill is used to help get the internet to places it’s needed most, like refugee camps, natural disaster sites, and even communities in the UK. And you can choose which projects you’d like to support.

High-quality internet access is essential to respond effectively to humanitarian emergencies and for a country’s longer-term development.

Responding to a humanitarian emergency requires coordination and communication. And this is often impossible - or at least very difficult! - without the internet. Whether we're talking about emergency services or organisations providing shelter, water, food, equipment, or medical assistance, internet access can be the difference between life and death.

And we shouldn't underestimate the importance of an internet connection for displaced people. The people who've been caught up in these humanitarian emergencies. Having access to the internet can enable affected families to stay in touch with their loved ones, send money, get news or provide education and entertainment during their darkest days.

Over 68 million people are displaced from their homes by conflict and disasters, and over the next 30 years climate change could result in a billion displaced people. We need the infrastructure set up to ensure that these millions of people can stay connected.

In 2016 the United Nations declared that access to the internet is a basic human right. But in Africa, only 18% of households currently have internet access, compared to 87% in Europe. This isn't acceptable.

Internet access is crucial for many reasons. From access to health & education services, to enabling economies to grow more rapidly. A recent survey of more than 4,800 small- and medium-sized businesses in 12 countries, from retail to manufacturing, showed that those using web technologies grew more than twice as fast as those with a minimal web presence.

There is a clear connection between the maturity of a country’s internet access with rising living standards; in health, it can provide isolated people with access to life-saving and improving information; and in education, it can open up prospects for vulnerable groups, women and girls.  — Jangala

Since the COVID pandemic spread across the globe in 2020, the world has changed dramatically. We have had to adapt our daily lives in so many ways. Communicating with separated family members, teaching children and working from home all rely on an internet connection. Access to the internet has never been so important.

27% of the poorest households in the UK don’t have an internet connection, compared to 3% of the richest. It’s even worse when you look at the regional disparity: the poorest households in the north spend three times as much as Londoners on broadband, relative to average incomes.

Not enough is being done in the effort to reduce the digital divide. The Cuckoo Compass is our force for change. Broadband, especially in today’s times, is a necessity.

The Cuckoo Compass is our force for change. We don’t think it’s ok that people in the UK and around the world cannot access the internet.

We take 1% of each bill and use it to help get the internet to places it’s needed most, like refugee camps, natural disaster sites, and even communities in the UK. And you can choose which projects you’d like to support. And on top of that, we donate an additional £5 each time you refer a friend.

Like us, they believe that decent internet access should be a human right. Jangala are a UK-based charity dedicated to enabling internet access for people who need it.

They have pioneered two products: the Big Box and the Get Box:

The Big Box creates high-quality scaleable Wi-Fi using any form of internet connection

The Get Box provides low-cost, secure, and rapidly deployable Wi-Fi for charities and aid organisations

Jangala has deployed internet services to locations around the world such as Calais, Kenya, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Scotland, London and Athens.

The Cuckoo Compass is something the entire team at Cuckoo are extremely passionate about. It’s the beating drum that helps keep us focused and driven to deliver on the mission: internet access for all.

And as we grow our customer base, we'll be able to support with more and more projects. Each one of you makes a contribution, simply by being with Cuckoo.

There are far too many people at home and abroad who don’t have access to the internet. Nearly 1.5 billion to be precise.

We're on a mission to connect the world - introducing the Cuckoo Compass

Enter the email address that you used to sign up with Cuckoo.

You will be sent an email containing a link for you to log in with.

Simply follow the link and you’re into your account.

We get it. You use the same password for everything so it’s easy to remember. After all, no one wants to be remembering their first cat's birthday when they just want to see their latest broadband bill. But this is the problem.

As your online presence grows so too does the exposure of that same password you use. It only takes one company that has your details to have a data breach, and then the keys for your digital life are out there for everyone to use.

In fact before reading the rest of this update, see if your email and/or password has been involved in a data breach by searching https://haveibeenpwned.com/. You may be surprised.

Research has shown that 73% of users on the web have duplicate passwords for their accounts.

That’s why we’ve switched to magic links. They'll ensure that someone with your regularly-used password is not able to get into your Cuckoo account. Furthermore, your magic link can only be used once. Once you’ve used it, no one else can!

Go to cuckoo.co/login today to try out this feature.

Here at Cuckoo, keeping your account for your eyes only is of the utmost importance. Everyone that signs up is trusting us to keep their details safe. That’s why we’re changing how you sign in to your Cuckoo account. From today, this will be via a passwordless login, also known as a magic link.

We've removed passwords from My Account

When it comes to pricing, the current crop of providers aren’t doing a great job. This isn’t just me saying so: criticism has come from, among others, the likes of The Times, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Daily Star, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Guardian… unanimous support across the press spectrum that politicians could only dream of. In short, the broadband market all too often reflects a broken, oligopolistic market.

First of all, anyone who’s gone on a broadband website will know that there are a ridiculously large number of deal options. TalkTalk, for example, have five different deals on their website: Faster Fibre, Superfast Fibre, Faster 150 Fibre, Fast Broadband and Ultra Fibre Optic. That’s before you get onto their call packages (Unlimited UK Calls or International Max), TV options (would you like TalkTalk TV, TalkTalk TV Box, TalkTalk TV Plus Box, TalkTalk TV multi-room, TV Select, TV Entertainment, TV Kids, or Sky Cinema) and choosing between the Super Router and All new Wi-Fi Hub. By my calculation that’s 360(!) different potential combinations of deals. No wonder we find it hard picking the right one for us.

But even when looking at a single deal, prices are opaque and difficult to understand. In a study by the Advertising Standards Authority, only 23% of individuals were able to correctly identify the total cost per month of a broadband deal when looking at an ad for the first time. The vast majority were left confused and misled. It’s no wonder that we end up on expensive and complex contracts.

Ofcom estimate that 8.8 million households in the UK are paying around £100 per year more than they should. Why? Simply because they got to the end of their contract and trusted that their provider would give them a fair deal. Instead, the vast majority of current providers hike prices at a contract’s end. It’s a tax on loyalty. At the time of writing, the infamous leader of the pack is Virgin Media’s M50 tariff, which increases by a whopping £192 per year after 12 months. In terms of relative increase, the winner is Post Office’s 11Mbps package, which increases by 67% 12 months in. Lovely.

Every day 25,000 broadband customers come to the end of their contract — and the majority of those see an automatic price rise.

Some plucky individuals will read the above and decide to raise it with their provider. Good luck to you. Negotiating a new deal is protracted, complex and painful. First, you might have to navigate your provider’s website to even find a way to contact them — no mean feat, since many providers make it as difficult to get in touch as possible. Then, having waited in a call queue for an hour or so, be prepared to listen to various explanations as to why you, as a loyal customer, are not allowed to receive anywhere near the same deal as new shiny customers who want to join for the first time. You may then generously be offered a pound or two off your current price, still likely far more expensive than introductory offers.

Perhaps instead you need to leave your contract early. There can be valid reasons; we get that people’s plans change. But most providers don’t agree, and instead charge exorbitant fees if you need to leave — far above what anyone could consider reasonable. Our CEO’s dad was trying to leave BT and was threatened with a £400 fine for ending his contract early. Want to challenge the fine? See above.

Thankfully, we are seeing progress. In the past Ofcom have fined EE and Virgin Media millions for levying excessive charges to customers who ended their contracts early. And Ofcom are now requiring companies to tell customers about their best deals when they reach the end of their contract. At least, they were just about to - until Coronavirus hit and they decided to delay enforcement.

senior executive at a top 5 UK ISP, May 2020

“We know charging loyal customers more is unfair and not nice, but we make billions from it. It’s a battle between the commercial and strategic arms of the business”

But we think that change is always best when it comes from the industry itself. From the bottom-up. It shouldn’t be the regulators job to require us to treat paying customers with respect.

And so when we set up Cuckoo, we wanted its approach to be distinctive. Refreshingly distinctive. But what exactly would that look like?

We started by setting out the overarching principles that should shape our approach to pricing. These, we resolved, would guide how, what and when we charged our customers.

Be clear. Our customers should know what they’re paying each month, and why. And next month. And the month after that. They shouldn’t be surprised at additional charges or jumps in the price. And they shouldn’t have to wade through dozens of different deals before joining us. Most people just want fast internet that works — and so that’s what we’ll give them.

Be reasonable. We don’t want to take advantage of customers whose plans change for reasons outside their control. Our business model shouldn’t rely on a bunch of customers not noticing or challenging excessive charges. We want people to understand why they pay what they they pay at every stage of the journey with us.

Reward loyalty. Customers that stick with us should be thanked, not exploited. At the very least, they should never get a worse deal than our newer customers; at best, they should be rewarded for being a committed customer.

… And be financially viable. Okay, this one might not be quite as exciting or revolutionary. But at the end of the day, if we don’t cover our costs we won’t be able to keep providing our service. Which doesn’t help anyone. So we’ll aim for a business model that is both sustainable (see our legal duty below) and fair — where each customer pays what they should, and not where a pool of loyal customers cross-subsidise those who like switching onto new contracts. (The incumbents have a euphemism for this — it’s called back-book front-book cross-subsidisation. Catchy.)

These principles provided our framework. But to get to the specific details, we needed to reach out to our customer base.

First, we Cuckoo Community and tested our pricing ideas directly with members of the public. This was great. It wasn’t easy — several people said we needed to rethink our approach. But that was exactly the feedback we needed as we refined our proposition. We got a bunch of ideas that we hadn’t considered, and we got a sense of what people cared about most.

Second, we ran a survey. We tested a bunch of price points against our competitors’ offerings with a group of about 1000. This was costly but it was a great way of getting some aggregated feedback to complement our individual verbatim thoughts from the Community.

“24% of people are more likely to change broadband provider due to Coronavirus”

Third, we built a financial model. We needed to work out what would be sustainable in the long-run under what assumptions, and test different scenarios. This helped us really get to the final answer and manage the trade-off between affordability, financial sustainability and quality of service.

That was our approach. And here’s what we’ve come up with.

One fast speed. One month rolling. No end of contract price rises.

You’ll pay £29.99 each month for your broadband. No fixed contract length; no post-contract loyalty tax. And only one deal (much like Bulb having one tariff). We might need to increase prices in line with inflation in future years (we’ll try not to!), but if it does, it will increase by the same amount for everyone. This monthly price was originally going to be higher, but feedback from our community adjusted this price!

And a £60 connection cost. We thought hard about this. We know that an upfront cost might put off some customers. However, each time someone joins our network we need to pay Openreach about £60 to switch them over; and we’d rather be transparent about that rather than tying you into a long contract. An upfront cost has proved manageable and successful at other companies — like ByMiles. What’s more, we hope to allow you to spread out your upfront cost over time via Klarna. We also buy you a good quality router — but we’ll give that to you for free as long as you send it back to us if you leave 😢.

What’s more, we’ll introduce a loyalty bonus. We commit to rewarding our most loyal customers — those who stay with us for many years. The longer you stay, the price will go down. Being entirely transparent, we need to monitor our financials and churn rates over the coming year before confirming the exact details and the size of our loyalty bonus; but watch this space.

But… our approach isn’t set in stone. This is our best attempt off the back of the work we’ve done and a few weeks of being live. To pivot, is to startup.

Think there’s a better approach? Great. Tell us. 🔊 We’d love to hear what you think, and consider whether it works for us. Contact us at hello@cuckoo.co or join the conversation on Twitter.

12 reasons to switch to Cuckoo

1. You want broadband that just works

2. You’re fed up with poor customer service

3. You want to know exactly where your money’s going

4. You’d like a seamless getting-broadband-in-new-house experience

5. You want to keep your broadband provider on their toes

6. You like stuff that looks good

7. You want to help get internet to the places it’s needed most

8. You’re fed up of the loyalty tax

9. You want to have a broadband provider that you can say these things to

10. You're not a fan of arbitrary c*ap

11. You want to be inspired to write your first-ever review

12. You’re fed up of being let down

More from Cuckoo

We're on a mission to connect the world - introducing the Cuckoo Compass

We've removed passwords from My Account

How to disrupt a £12bn industry; the Cuckoo pricing story

How fast can you go?