Telecommunications Adjudicator update for April 2025

At the end of April 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 4.60 million. There are 1.48 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.53 million.  *

The following is an update on the principal areas of project activity being led by OTA2.

Passive Infrastructure Access

Operational performance remains good.

Unauthorised Use: Discussions with CPs and Openreach relating to the challenges found where CPs have failed to record their network occupation correctly are progressing steadily.

Incident & Planned Works Management: Monitoring continues in this area, that will iterate the framework as any learning is identified. There have been some questions raised over the efficacy of the JSV process which is under review.

Beyond Build: Meeting held with Openreach to review the initial CP discussion points. OTA2 will reconvene the meetings once Openreach feedback has been received.

Areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Performance is good.

The order profile remains slightly lower compared year on year circa 4%. The workstack has dropped below 18k. Planning performance for KCI2 remains extremely close to the target of 70% at 66%. If the quick win deliveries are added the outcome is 78%. Overall, the delivery performance looks very good.

Areas of interest:

EAD2: Ongoing workstream developing the product proposals. A productive workshop was held to review progress and confirm the collective understanding of progress. CPs are very keen to see the first outline of the new contract before the main summer break period.

Exchange Exit: A number of CPs have now signed up for the commercial offer. The next stage is to get trials underway to prove the new hardened process for migration and to test the scheduling of circuit cutover.

Copper and Fibre

A collaborative review of KCI2 Assure is underway between industry and Openreach. Openreach has identified its planned improvement activities, with the Initial workshop held on 07 May 2025.

Industry engagement to review FTTP metrics has continued with CPs proposing 8 metrics for FTTP. Seven of these have been agreed with discussions on the eight paused as it relates to KCI2 Assure commitment dates, so is awaiting progress on the improvement activity detailed above.  Openreach and Industry have reviewed the metrics populated with FY 20/25 data, which has identified several aspects requiring further clarification and discussion. This is planned for mid-May.

Openreach remain on track to launch ‘Business Standard’ on 01 June 2025. This introduces an approach which utilises Ordinance Survey site classifications to assign the appropriate order type between Premium and Advanced, either automatically or by ‘Sales Query’ back to a CP. The approach is selected by CPs. A separate stream of activity is also underway between industry and Openreach to improve provision orders into business sites such that CPs better understand why an engineer is unable to gain access, the precise location of ONT/NTE and the reasons for any delay on the day. It remains the intent to implement these improvements as part of Business Standard, without the need for CP or Openreach systems development.  

All-IP Steering Group

Openreach deployed its UK WLR Stop Sell in September 2023 with limited exemptions, permitting orders of WLR lines in scenarios where the equivalent All-IP product or product variant were either not yet available, or not fully consumed across the supply chain. These exemptions were removed in March 2025. Industry will however be able to place WLR3 orders in exceptional circumstances to support CNI and vulnerable customers. However, Openreach plan to withdraw these exceptions during 2025 and have proposed a timetable to industry and are awaiting feedback. Openreach plan to ratchet up pressure on CPs with customers remaining on WLR through pricing, direct customer contact and other ways from January 2026.

The Prove Telecare pilot has now underway, which tests the full reversion capability to support where an Openreach engineer identifies that the telecare device is incompatible post migration to SOGEA/FTTP and allows for working service to be provided via WLR3 before leaving site. Openreach believes it remains on target for a full launch, summer 2025. During April, Openreach ran a ‘refresher’ call for industry covering the existing Openreach processes where telecare alarms are present but also highlighting the CP responsivity to have adequate validation in place via its sales channels to correctly identify telecare users.

Openreach had requested CPs consider any future telecare support requirements beyond the existing Prove Telecare SVR to ensure this can be addressed in the 2025/26 financial year. Industry responded that development will be required but has yet to define any requirement.   

Customer Switching

OTS (One Touch Switching) continues to deliver high volumes of residential switches for over 300 registered retail brands and their customers, with TOTSCo (The One Touch Switching company) reporting over 2 million switch related messages being sent between CPs in April 2025.

OTA2 remain committed to the supporting CPs and TOTSCo with the ‘exceptions’ to the successful OTS Process flows that these high volumes are now helping to identify

Erroneous Transfers have been an area of much discussion and concern amongst CPs, specifically instances impacting Business customers who are not part of the OTS process and have not yet been serviced through the GPLB process.  The industry established TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process), is now active and OTA2 will be leading the first ‘root cause analysis’ in late May/early June to better understand if there are specific issues that CPs should address that will reduce error instances.

All documents can be found on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching.

OTS Porting

Industry designs and processes for OTS Porting are now published and can be viewed on the OTA2 website, Best Practice Guidance page, Number Port Core Processes section. It should be noted that OTS Porting will operate alongside the usual porting processes with phased adoption by CPs as their solutions come online. OTA2 will work with the CP community to facilitate the initial adoption of OTS Porting by those who’s solutions are most advanced. OTA2 continue to work with the wholesaler community and good progress is being made to agree a consistent and pragmatic process that will allow them to also support OTS Porting when acting as agents for their CP customers.   

Business Switching

The GPLB-SG (Gaining Provider Led Business - Steering Group, which is OTA2 co-chaired) and GPLB-IPG (Industry Process Group) continue to lead the design and development of the Business Switching process for both IAS and NBICS, with focus now on the detail, such as message delivery polices, test cases and exception scenarios. A short introduction to GPL Business Switching has been produced as a ‘Webinar’ and can be found on the public facing website here: Gaining Provider Led Business Switching public - FCS alongside further documents that include the proposed message set.  

Number Porting

The OTA2 chaired NPESG (Number Porting Executive Steering Group) and NPPCG (Number Porting Process and Commercial Group), continue to address both operational challenges within the existing Porting processes and the wider strategic considerations as All-IP and VoIP become the norm.  

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 30 April 2025 was as follows:

Notes:

1. MI and SI are Managed-Install and Self-Install orders
2. FTTC is Fibre to the cabinet
3. FTTP is Fibre to the premises
4. SOGEA is Single Order Generic Ethernet Access
5. GFAST is Fibre-base Ultrafast Broadband

Copper repair

LLU and WLR ‘on time repair’ performance has seen a slight upward trend for LLU and WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 84.2% and 81.0% respectively, by week ending 25 April 2025.

*The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections