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Ofcom Probes Deeper into Flaws of New UK Broadband Switching Process

Friday, Jan 31st, 2025 (2:50 pm) - Score 3,920
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The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has called on major ISPs – including BT, Sky Broadband, Vodafone, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media – to provide more information in an effort to help them understand why the new consumer broadband and phone switching system (One Touch Switching) is still struggling to successfully complete many consumer migration requests.

Just to recap. The OTS service, which after many delays finally went live on 12th September 2024, was part of an effort to make it both quicker and easier for consumers to change their internet and phone provider (regardless of what network they’re on). All of this is being managed through a central messaging platform via the industry-led One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo).

NOTE: Ofcom states that all communications providers switching a UK residential customer’s Internet Access Service and/or Number-based Interpersonal Communications Service, which is provided at a fixed location, are in scope of their OTS rules, and must follow the OTS process.

However, one of the biggest challenges of this system has flowed from the difficulty of getting the “matching process” to work properly, which exists to ensure that customer switches are correctly verified and then migrated between providers. But this process still has a tendency to fail, sometimes even when providers have entered the correct customer data, and it’s not always easy for providers to figure out why.

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According to the latest switching data, the daily switch match success rate has risen slightly to average around 64% over the past week (ranging between 60% to 68% per day) and it should be noted that some failed switches will still get approved later, after corrections are made. Today TOTSCo reported that, since its launch, a total of 700,000 switch orders had been placed (up by 50k in the week) and 487,000 successfully completed (up by 32k in the week).

Ofcom has been actively examining this problem since late last year and, as part of that, the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA) recently conducted a review of the process and suggested some improvements (here). But this largely seemed to call on ISPs to improve their testing and implementation of the platform.

On the flip side, quite a few ISPs privately complain that TOTSCo’s system does not make testing and correcting errors as easy and transparent as it could be. Such issues may not be helped by the fact that key documentation is still stuck in a “change freeze“, which makes it difficult to get certain defects addressed (this should perhaps be unfrozen so that much-needed fixes and clarifications can be made by the process group).

The latest development is that Ofcom have put in a related information request to the market’s largest providers, which looks set to inform their next course of action under their ongoing enforcement programme.

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Ofcom Statement

One Touch Switch (OTS) went live on 12 September 2024. Since then, we have been monitoring the progress of providers in taking steps to ensure that increasing numbers of consumers can benefit from OTS, in accordance with General Conditions C7.18 – C.27. While we are monitoring this progress, it is important to note that it remains industry’s responsibility to ensure compliance with their obligations, and to engage with The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) as appropriate.

While OTS is working well for the majority of consumers, we have been made aware of issues affecting matching rates between providers. For a switch to be successfully processed via OTS, there needs to be a customer match from the Losing Provider to the Gaining Provider. To ensure that customers can enjoy the full benefits of easier, quicker and more reliable switching, it is crucial that customers do not experience obstructions when attempting to switch away from their current provider. Providers must therefore ensure that their OTS systems and processes function correctly on both a Gaining and Losing Provider basis.

To further understand this issue and its impact on consumers, we issued information requests on 29 January 2025 to the largest providers – BT, Sky, Vodafone, TalkTalk, and VMO2. Once we receive this information, we will begin a process of analysis and decide whether further action is necessary.

It’s important to note that the system is getting better, albeit not as fast as everybody would ideally like. Ofcom do recognise some of the difficulties, but as time goes on the risk for providers is that they may start using more of a stick to get things done.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
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9 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo Chris Hills says:

    If the government would open up the postcode address file then I think that would resolve most of the matching problems.

    1. Avatar photo MilesT says:

      opening up the PAF is not as likely to help as you might think. Amongst people who have to use PAF professionally, it’s well known that the data quality is less than ideal, and updates tend to be laggy.

      There are better government/industry databases of location to use which should be open. UPRN–Unique Property Reference Number-is designed to be more accurate/specific than PAF (and I think Openreach uses it, fairly sure I have seen that as a search open on BTW broadband checker).

      What I don’t know is if broadband providers actually correlate their customer connections to UPRN as a matter of course.

      Ordnance survey TOIDs might also be relevant in some cases.

  2. Avatar photo DaveZ says:

    Of course it’s not working. You name me one ISP that wants to make it easy for their customers to switch to someone else.

    1. Avatar photo Bubbles says:

      BT were alright with me using OTS lol.

  3. Avatar photo SicOf says:

    So I’S’Ps marking their own homework, grate.
    If ofcom were at all adept from the consumer perspective they’d gather their own data (consumer satisfaction), and then recompense consumers and SME’s that haven’t been able to keept their origional tel numbers in a timely fashion.
    But of course then it may come to light that Ofcom ‘spin’ on OTS, or even their own legislation ‘enforcement’ since 199/2003 prior to OTS on number portability is less than satisfactory.
    Mind, they could then recoup all the CxO’s bonuses paid since then as evidently ‘regulation’ hasn’t exactly been up to mark, and i.e. pay for performance (ditto for OTS and OTA), no?

  4. Avatar photo Shaheed Haque says:

    But this is the exact incompetence of the regulatory system. If it worked properly in the interests of the consumer then the FIRST question on their minds before granting ANY operating license should have been “how do customers switch”. The need for a clear and unambiguous identification system (with any needed personal and commercial safeguards) needed to be at the heart of the system, not an afterthought

    1. Avatar photo Do Consider Well... says:

      True, but Ofcon had 20+ years to get this sorted, a 20th Century incarnation of luddites not to have got it sorted out ‘regulated’ in over 20 years even without OTS.
      We must stop excusing ‘the system’ as it is people who define, inplement, execute, and ammend ‘the system’, CxO types are all paid handsomely for supposedly ensuring this occurs, not to mention aims to protect consumer interests, and if they dont by the definition of ‘regulation’ by the government itsself there’s to be
      ” incentives and penalties to change the behaviour of individuals or organisations”… and
      “or barring offenders from regulated industries or professions”, stopping a few bad apples from rotting the rest of the barrel…

      You’d think given the £Bs of taxpayer’s money at even a very basic level there’d be no overbuild (waste) other than for pure resilliency, another delinquency of sensible basic common sense ‘regulation’ let alone waste (fraudulent?) use of public monies?

  5. Avatar photo RobC says:

    While there are several factors behind the matching issues, the single biggest cause is the software underpinning all of this. The actual OTS system is a badly written abomination with documentation that contradicts itself regularly and a testing system that a) is fundamentally broken and b) doesn’t actually test that you’re complying with the specifications anyway. It’s an admitted fact by TOTSCO’s outsourced service desk that you actually have to send out-of-spec messages to it just to pass their ‘testing’.

  6. Avatar photo DaveZ says:

    When you look at the size of political donations parties, (of both colours), are accepting from industry, why are you surprised the regulatory bodies are just toothless, nodding dogs? And let’s face it, it’s not just OFCOM.

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