Telecommunications Adjudicator update for May 2025

At the end of May 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 4.48 million. There are 1.40 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.51 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 continue.

Incident & Planned Works Management: The strategic systems changes are beginning to be delivered. There is more to come, and we continue to monitor how the interaction is working.

Beyond Build: We have held the first open session with Openreach, Ofcom and CPs to review the document. We are seeking feedback before we begin the process of targeting areas to focus on.

Areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Performance is good. We have seen some excellent work looking to understand failure which leads to rapid rearranges. This is helping to eat into the challenges around service.

The order profile remains slightly subdued, compared year on year it is circa 4% lower. The workstack has dropped below 18k. Planning performance for KCI2 remains extremely close to the target of 70% at 68%. If the quick win deliveries are added the outcome is 78%. Overall, the delivery performance looks very good.

Areas of interest:

EAD2: Openreach have announced that they will be pushing back the EAD2 launch date, this is to accommodate likely system changes required under the TAR consultation from Ofcom. The product is continuing to be developed and the aim is to still hit the target for trials.

Exchange Exit: A growing 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. Two collaborative workshops have been held to date, with good progress made on identifying areas for improvement. A further workshop is planned for early July but improvements in processes and performance will be incremental across the financial year.

Industry engagement to review FTTP metrics has continued with CPs proposing 8 metrics for FTTP.   Openreach and Industry have reviewed the metrics populated with FY 20/25 data, which identified several aspects requiring further clarification and discussion. The OTA2 considers that both sides are now sufficiently close that metric definition should be agreed for these shortly.  Discussions on the final metric were paused as it related to KCI2 Assure commitment dates, however, given the progress on KCI2 Assure improvements a straw-man proposal has been made by Openreach for industry consideration.

Openreach launched ‘Business Standard’ on 01 June 2025 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 couple of issues were identified and are now in the process of being resolved.    

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 confirmed its timetable for this, which will be formally briefed out.

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.     

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) confirming that over 1 million ‘Switch Order Trigger’ confirmation messages have been sent since launch in September 2024.

OTA2 continue to work with TOTSCo and CP customers to resolve any issues, if exception scenarios are identified.

The industry created TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process) member directory continues to grow, and the process successfully run for the small volume of suspected erroneous transfers, with root cause issues being identified and rectified by CPs.

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

OTS Porting

The focus is now on two main workstreams; delivery timelines for CPs who can directly validate incoming OTS Porting requests (e.g. ‘operate a ‘vertically integrated’ model), where the group are working forwards to agree a delivery timetable, and Voice Service Providers who act as wholesalers but will manage OTS Porting requests for their CP customers, who are finalising the Best Practice Solution to achieve this.     

Business Switching

The GPLB-SG (Gaining Provider Led Business - Steering Group, which is OTA2 co-chaired) and GPLB-IPG (Industry Process Group) continue to focus on feedback from CPs to the published document sets and bring these all to an up-issued status and into full change control. 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.  

Number Porting

The OTA2 chaired NPESG (Number Porting Executive Steering Group) and NPPCG (Number Porting Process and Commercial Group), meet on alternate months to set strategic objectives (NPESG), such as security and the future of Number Porting in an ‘All IP’ world or respond to operational challenges (NPPCG), including the complexity of Voice Service supply chains and maintaining up to date contact details for range holders.    

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 31 May 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 82.4% and 81.0% respectively, by week ending 30 May 2025.

*The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections