One Touch UK Broadband ISP Switching Aims to Go Live March 2024

The industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo), which has the arduous task of implementing Ofcom’s significantly delayed One Touch Switch (OTS) migration system for broadband ISPs, has today revealed that it is working toward a planned go-live date of Thursday 14th March 2024 – nearly a full year late.

In case anybody has forgotten. In 2021 Ofcom set a deadline of 3rd April 2023 for UK ISPs to implement OTS, which expands the existing Gaining Provider Led (GPL) migration system (i.e. you contact your new provider and the switch is handled automatically) to work across alternative networks (the old one was mostly focused on Openreach based providers) and to action switches within just 1 day “where technically possible“, instead of 10.

Sadly, that deadline came and went, which is something we’ve covered extensively several times before – including at the start of this week (here, here and here). Needless to say that the delays were, in our opinion, a collective mix of industry and regulator failings. But we don’t want to repeat ourselves so soon after summarising all this again, so we’ll just skip to the good news.

In short, TOTSCo has today said that it is “essential for all parties to focus their planning on a common [launch] date” and, to that effect, they’ve agreed to set a “planned go-live date” of Thursday 14th March 2024.

TOTSCo Statement

For industry to achieve a successful OTS implementation, it is essential for all parties to focus their planning on a common date. After considering views from a variety of industry stakeholders, including Ofcom, the planned go-live date is Thursday 14 March 2024.

We believe that this date strikes the right balance between the necessity to achieve a speedy and orderly OTS launch, and the effort and prioritisation across industry needed to deliver it.

We will be focusing our efforts on working with industry, through the Industry Test Working Groups, to develop and execute co-ordinated test schedules that deliver a fully tested process in advance of this date.

To support this, we are pleased to announce that the TOTSCo hub will be available in a test environment from 4 September for users to start integration testing. From 20 October, a production environment will be added for industry trials using live data. These dates are a significant improvement on previous announcements.

TOTSCo believes that the new date strikes an achievable balance between the ISPs who feel that the date should be earlier, and those who will need to re-plan to achieve this date. At this stage it remains unclear whether Ofcom will aim to enforce this date, although so far, the regulator has allowed the industry some flexibility to overcome its problems, while at the same time warning of enforcement action if they don’t get their house in order.

We’re inclined to agree with TOTSCo that the new date does look viable, although it’s worth noting that wider system testing has only just got underway and there’s thus still plenty of scope for more delays further down the road, if additional problems are encountered.