TOTSCo Set Plan to Improve Performance of Broadband and Phone Switching
The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which is the industry-led company responsible for delivering Ofcom’s process – One Touch Switching (OTS) – for quicker and easier UK switching (migration) between home broadband and phone providers, has today set out details of how they plan to improve the system’s performance and monitoring.
The system, which first went live on 12th September 2024, remains a Gaining Provider Led (GPL) process, where the customer contacts their new (“gaining“) ISP to start and manage the process on their behalf. But after a bit of a bumpy start and some ongoing issues, the new system is already helping around 1.8 million consumers to switch ISP every year and is also in the process of being extended to business connections (here).
“OTS has been in place for 18 months now and we believe it is working well for consumers and providers. However, as OTS continues to mature, we believe there are still opportunities for improvement,” said the latest update from TOTSCo.
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As part of the new push, TOTSCo says they’ve identified several areas which could “lead to a poor switching experience and/or consumer harm” and are keen to help service providers improve these. First on the list is the need to improve their Hub match success rates (switch match success rates), which currently still average around 63% (i.e. some switch attempts fail first time around due to details that don’t match).
On top of that they’ve also identified problems where some switching messages accepted by the messaging Hub are “not successfully delivered because they either time out or are rejected by the recipient“, although this issue is said to be low in volume.
In addition, TOTSCo found some switch orders are not being responded to in a timely fashion, which may delay cessation of the old service and can sometimes also cause double billing issues between the gaining and losing ISPs (the OTS rules forbid this).
The fourth issue identified is that some internet and phone providers fail to respond when issues are raised with them (effectively flouting the rules and hoping Ofcom won’t take action) and this can, in turn, cause the issues to persist for longer.
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TOTSCo’s Proposed Approach for Improvements
In response, we propose to take the following approach for TOTSCo’s areas of focus:
1. Improve and expand TOTSCo current performance and monitoring information
We will enhance the information we currently publish under ‘Residential Trends and Insights’ on our website and share more detail on M&I activities at our monthly Stakeholder Forum.
Additional information we intend to publish includes:
➤ Greater visibility of variation in match success rate e.g. anonymised top and bottom performers, quartiles, highest observed match success rate, and trend information.
➤ Exploration of a “customer” or “session” match rate, to better reflect the customer switching experience. As this data is held by providers, we will seek views on whether anonymised data could be shared.
2. Support individual providers
➤ Continue direct engagement with providers.
➤ Introduce Service Review Meetings to discuss performance and share best practice.
➤ Facilitate bilateral meetings with highest volume providers to improve the corresponding bilateral match-success rates.
3. Make a provider-specific report available
We will develop a monthly provider-specific report enabling providers to:
➤ Compare their gaining and losing match success rates against industry benchmarks
➤ Track trends over time
➤ Review failed messages and non-response metrics and compare against industry benchmarks.
4. Assess industry interest in outage notification approach
We also welcome industry views on outage notifications. The outage calendar is currently used by providers to report planned outages. We are keen to understand whether there are circumstances in which TOTSCo should proactively publish information about any unnotified outage of a provider’s OTS messaging system, e.g. where an outage exceeds a certain duration and/or where providers are unresponsive to TOTSCo’s requests for information.
TOTSCO said they’re “confident” that the proposed activities can be delivered within their existing budget, although they do warn that this “may change if the scope of our activities expands significantly“. For some smaller ISPs and resellers with low margins per connection, the cost of implementing TOTSCo can already be problematic.
The company plans to consult on all this until 7th April 2026, although it’s worth noting that they also identified some areas which need to be addressed, but where the issues appear to fall outside TOTSCo’s remit to tackle (i.e. in many cases these may be issues that Ofcom need to review and tackle directly). We’ve listed these areas below:
• Leakage – Providers are offering non-OTS switching journeys where a successful match cannot be obtained.
• Non-participation – Providers are not on the live directory and are therefore unable to offer OTS journeys.
• Quality and timeliness of switching information.
• Quality of contractual information.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I recently had a good experience with One Touch Switch when I went from Virgin Media to Sky. Sky were very good, as were CityFibre with their install communication. Virgin emailed all relevant end of service information to me. Sky sent the router, CityFibre installed the ONT and set up the router, Sky activated the line, and Virgin Media disconnected me the morning after and altered the billing so I only paid for the days I used in that month.
All very smooth. No complaints.
I think Sky only support One Touch Switch from ISPs which use Openreach, I wonder how many other ISPs have similar restrictions.
I’d also like to see some more reassurance that the old service won’t be cancelled until the new service is confirmed working, especially when switching underlying networks. The option to have an overlapping period would be nice.
Perhaps an option similar to the STAC code for mobiles would work, some firm of no quibble no retentions cancellation process
Untrue. I was a Virgin Media cable broadband customer. I used OTS and Sky handled everything. I’m now on CityFibre.
I switched from Virgin to EE via one touch switch.
It failed to cease my service with Virgin even though Virgin had the notification. (The switch notice shows in the app) .I also had the impact of switching texts and emails.
I was billed by Virgin the full out of contact price for 2 months even after contacting them many times as well as being billed by EE.
Had to email CEO office to get it resolved.
They still owe me £172 that is a credit sat on my closed account
Been waiting 2 months for a cheque.
Not sure who to blame for this. Virgin ? EE ? Or the OTS system.
Clearly has some bugs to work out.
I knew there has to be some sort of system for this, I can’t imagine if I switch from O2 to 3 they will ring each others indian call centre where incompetence is mandatory to arrange switch.
My brother used it to change from Talk Talk to Zzoomm and it worked okay, much to my surprise.
Not sure if I would use it to switch from one network to another, but it worked for him
The OTS system was literally designed for people to switch between different networks. There was already a system in existence for people to switch between Openreach ISPs.
And what is the problem that leads to anyone wanting to switch…? Lets not tackle that but implement a unfinalised system at costs ultimately paid for by consumers, to tackle the symptom of excessive pricing, rather then prevent price gouging, maniplation, small print that does not work in the consumers interests, at the diktat of the occaisionally reactive ‘regulator’, amazingly efficient (not).
SAD.