One Week Left Until New UK Broadband ISP Switching System Fully Takes Over

The industry has just one week left to iron out the key bugs in their implementation of Ofcom’s new One Touch Switching (OTS) system before it takes full control of switching between fixed broadband and phone providers. But the latest update from the industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) suggests that there are still some problems left to tackle.

Just to recap. The heavily delayed launch of OTS, which aims to make it both quicker and easier for consumers to switch between broadband and phone providers on physically separate UK networks (e.g. migrating from a CityFibre based ISP to Virgin Media and back etc.), was finally introduced on 12th September 2024.

However, the launch also acknowledged that TOTSCo’s industry-led messaging platform still needed to improve the success rate of its “matching process” (i.e. ensuring that customer switches are correctly verified and migrated between providers), which caused Ofcom to temporarily retain the old migration process (aka – Notification of Transfer / NoT+) – until 24th October 2024 – to act as a fallback for OTS failures.

Since then a fair bit of progress has been made and Ofcom have also drafted in the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) to “coordinate and facilitate industry efforts“, not least by helping to identify the sources of the remaining issues and to get them resolved before the deadline (here).

At the start of this month, TOTSCo reported that, out of the 100,000 (total) switch orders that had been placed since launch, only 32,000 successful completions had been recorded and the switch match success rate stood at 60%. The latest data shows that, with one week to go, some 70 brands (e.g. ISPs) have so far submitted a total of 163,000 orders, leading to 76,000 successful completions, so there’s still some work to be done.

Paul Bradbury, TOTSCo’s CEO, said:

“We’ve made steady progress this week with One Touch Switch (OTS). Since go-live, over 70 brands have submitted a total of 163,000 orders, leading to 76,000 successful completions. As the NOT+ process is set to be decommissioned on 24 October (as confirmed by Ofcom’s letter to affected CPs last week), we anticipate these numbers will continue to rise.

I’m pleased to see a continued decrease in both logged user defects, alongside a growing sign-up and adoption of the CP-to-CP communication tool. This progress highlights how collaboration is driving the broader adoption of OTS across the industry.”

The live system data shows that TOTSCo’s switch match success rate is currently hovering around the 61% mark, which despite the odd dip is more or less the same level it’s been at for the past three weeks. But this doesn’t give the full picture and the customer experience will be better than this, not least because some of these are repeat attempts to match the same customer as they try to move between ISPs. Nevertheless, quite a few attempts to switch via OTS are still failing to complete, but this should continue to improve.

In fairness, even if everything is working perfectly then we wouldn’t necessarily expect a 100% success rate, not least because switches may also fail due to reasons that are either intended (e.g. to block SLAMMING) or which do not relate to a fault in the system itself (e.g. an error by the end-user or ISP). This is also a new system, which means figuring out what is a “normal” trend is still a bit of a work-in-progress.

However, there will no doubt be some trepidation among Ofcom and ISPs about what will happen after the 24th October, particularly if a high number of legitimate switch attempts by consumers are still not making it through TOTSCo’s system. After that date, the providers won’t be able to fall back on the old NoT+ system, and consumer complaints may rise if they encounter more friction while trying to escape an existing provider.