Cuckoo customer base acquired by Onestream

Cuckoo Broadband has stopped accepting new customers after agreeing the sale of its broadband customer base to rival ISP Onestream.

The provider ended new sales from 4pm on 11 May 2026, with existing customers set to continue receiving service during a migration period.

Following completion of the transfer, Cuckoo said it intends to undertake a solvent wind-down of the company.

Illustration: Choose.co.uk

Cuckoo sold to Onestream

Cuckoo has confirmed the sale of its broadband customer base to Onestream, with the provider stopping new sales from 4pm on 11 May 2026. The company warned partners that any orders placed after that point would not transfer to Onestream and would be cancelled.

Under the deal, Cuckoo's customer contracts, brand and domain will transfer to Onestream, while customer connections will continue to run through AllPoints Fibre Networks (APFN)'s Aquila wholesale platform. Aquila aggregates access across Openreach, CityFibre and APFN's own fibre network footprint.

The sale ends the ownership by Fern Trading - the investment group behind both APFN and Cuckoo - of a direct-to-consumer broadband brand, with the group's focus now entirely on APFN. All roles within Cuckoo have been placed at risk of redundancy during a period of collective consultation.

Launched in 2020, Cuckoo positioned itself as a more consumer-friendly challenger broadband brand, campaigning against above-inflation mid-contract price rises and what it described as unfair exit fees within the broadband industry.

The provider was acquired by Giganet in 2022 before later becoming part of APFN following the consolidation of several regional fibre and broadband brands including Jurassic Fibre and Swish Fibre.

Onestream had around 75,000 broadband customers prior to the acquisition, with the addition of Cuckoo's base expected to roughly double its scale to around 150,000 customers. The company had completed API integration into the Aquila platform shortly before the deal was announced.

Exiting Cuckoo customer need to know

Cuckoo has confirmed that existing customers will continue to receive service as normal during the migration period, with no disruption to their connection and no immediate change to pricing. Existing agreements will continue to be honoured during the transition.

If you are already outside your minimum contract term with Cuckoo, you are free to switch to another provider now without penalty if you do not wish to move to Onestream. Customers still within contract would normally remain bound by their existing minimum term unless a future contract change triggers a penalty-free right to leave.

For those customers, the key point to watch for is any notification of a change to your contract terms. Under Ofcom rules, providers must give at least one month's notice of any materially detrimental change and allow affected customers to leave without penalty during that period. If Onestream changes pricing or terms in future, customers should be informed before those changes take effect.

When your current contract expires, you will be renewing as an Onestream customer, so it is worth familiarising yourself with the provider's pricing and terms before that point. Onestream is a competitively priced broadband provider operating across Openreach and CityFibre networks, with plans available on 12 and 24-month terms and a fixed annual price increase of £2.75 each April.

For a full breakdown of Onestream's current plans, pricing and terms, see our Onestream broadband page.

From challenger brand to consolidation

When Cuckoo launched in 2020, the company positioned itself as a direct challenge to what founder Alex Fitzgerald described as a broken broadband market, criticising above-inflation price rises, confusing pricing structures and punitive exit fees.

That approach helped Cuckoo stand out alongside a number of smaller broadband challengers attempting to compete against larger providers through customer service, simpler pricing or a more distinct brand identity. Providers including Origin Broadband, Earth Broadband and Rebel Internet have all, in different ways, positioned themselves around improving the broadband customer experience.

But Cuckoo's journey from independent challenger brand to acquisition target also reflects how difficult the UK broadband market has become for smaller retail ISPs operating on wholesale infrastructure. Competition has intensified as larger providers including Sky, BT Group and Vodafone have become increasingly aggressive on broadband pricing while benefiting from much larger customer bases and wider mobile or media ecosystems.

The result is a market where differentiation through branding and customer experience alone may be becoming harder to sustain over the long term, particularly for providers without their own large-scale network infrastructure or broader consumer platforms.