Telecommunications Adjudicator update for December 2025

At the end of December 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 3.58 million. There are 1.09 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.39 million.  *

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

Passive Infrastructure Access

Build demand remains flat and operational performance remains at a good level. There continues to be increased activity in the customer connection space as CPs leverage their built networks.

Unauthorised Use (UU): The contract changes are now in place. Openreach have provided CPs with their data packs showing ‘signs of life’ where NoIs have expired. CPs are reminded that the grace period for declaring any UU ends at the end of March and they should be getting on with informing Openreach as quickly as possible if they have any undisclosed UU.

Incident & Planned Works Management: Work is on-going.

Beyond Build: Awaiting feedback on the areas shared before the Christmas break. Pole Top Capacity and Rules for Drop Cable removal and a short Best Practice Guide for Operative Undertaking Street Works.

Other areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers
• Pole replacement times after an incident

Ethernet

Overall performance remains strong, although the order profile is subdued—approximately 14% lower year-on-year. The workstack has fallen well below c14.5k, which introduces challenges around fluidity and impacts reporting.

Changes to the Order Handling Desk have been initiated bringing back an element of direct order management. The Changes have so far been well received by CPs.

Areas of Interest:

EAD2: Solid progress, with trial orders beginning to flow.

Exchange Exit: Most major CPs have signed up for the commercial offer. The next step is to initiate trials to validate the new hardened migration process and test circuit cutover scheduling .

Copper and Fibre

The Business IWG initiative is continuing focused on improvement of business customer orders efficiency and experience, however, this is being expanded to adopt the approach deployed succesfully for the KCI2 Assure improvement activity.

The discussions to agree the 2026/27 targets for the FTTP customer experience metrics have commenced and aim to end during Q1 2026. Initial discussions have been undertaken with industry outlining some changes to the metrics it wished Openreach to consider and setting out its view of the ambitions for the metrics. Openreach are considering these and plan to respond to industry on 23 January 2026. CPs have also requested that Openreach introduce a RAG status supporting the measures, however, discussions are at a very early stage for this aspect.

The new Best Practice Guide to support Residential FTTP orders has now been published.

Openreach will be running a Proof of Concept starting January covering pre-emptive FTTP repair incidents and PEWs where Openreach will communicate directly with those customers who have been affected advising them of the cause and providing updates on progress/closure.

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 planned to withdraw these exceptions during 2025 but are yet to update on any new timescale.

There are approximately 3.0m WLR lines remaining, with a run rate of reductions of 45k per week. A run rate of circa 50k per week is required to reach zero by January 2027.  With both PDPL (SOTAP) and prove Telecare now being made available, Openreach consider it has provided all of the migration journeys to allow CPs to progress with migrating their customer PSTN bases.  SOGEA migration special offers have also been launched plus Openreach has relaxed FTTP Priority Exchange Stop Sell rules to enable bulk migrations from WLR and associated broadband products to either SOGEA or SOTAP in Great Britain but excluding Northern Ireland

Prove Telecare has now launched which will allow this significant cohort of vulnerable customers to be addressed.

Openreach announced its planned emergency-overrun solution (EVAc) for WLR3 lines remaining in January 2027. This is designed to use existing WLR3 processes and to avoid the need for CP system investment. The benefit of their approach is that end customer can maintain their voice service and billing relationship with their CP and requires no end customer intervention. The product will not support broadband or ISDN2/30 customers and is a defeatured and restricted version of the BT Wholesale PDPL product. There will also be a gating process to move across so not all customers who fail to migrate by end-January 2027 will be moved to EVAc. OTA2 concerns remain regarding both Industry and Openreach understanding of the complexity of the migration task for the remaining businesses on WLR. Openreach are formulating how better to raise awareness amongst business customers of the need to exit analogue products by January 2027 .

Customer Switching

OTA2 are working closely with several CPs using OTS (One Touch Switching) to help them identify opportunities that will improve their effective use of process to switch a small volume of customers who are currently unable to follow the correct process. OTA2 continue to work through industry forums (including the OTS-IPG, which OTA2 co-chair) to assist CPs with the ‘edge case’ scenarios that the sheer volume of messages and switches has brought to light. In practise assistance is usually achieved by guiding CPs through the process Best Practice (as documented) or providing technical advice regarding responding to messages in the correct manner.  

OTA2 continue supporting the TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process) which is available to all registered CPs. The TETP documents are published on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching.  CPs are also reminded that OTA2 have published several Best Practice Guides for Switching and Working line Takeover, which offer advice and support for CPs to avoid creating an ‘Erroneous Transfer’ scenario, including ‘red flag’ issues that have been demonstrated to contribute to erroneous orders being raised if they are not factored into a Gaining CP’s process. 

Business Switching

The focus of the GPLB-SG and IPG (Gaining Provider Led Business – Steering Group & Industry Process Group) is currently on the production of ‘Best Practice Guides’ to assist CPs in the effective and efficient use of the Switching for Business process and the implementation of the process into the live environment in advance of live testing and launch.   All published documents associated with the Switching for Business process and message specifications can be found on the Gaining Provider Led Business Switching public - FCS website, with the  core document set of Switching for Business documents also published  on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching – both sites are free to access without need for registration.    

Number Porting

At the December NPESG (Number Port Executive Steering Group) a number of agenda items were raised and discussed, these included several that challenged the Porting community to consider the opportunities and risks of All-IP, the potential impacts of change on existing Porting processes and Best Practices and what strategies might be adopted. This was also coupled with a proposal to formally record potential requirements sourced from change proposals to the NPESG (even if not progressed at this time) to form a reference library for future strategic developments. There was also a proposal to modify the ‘Terms of Reference’ for the NPESG, with the objective of refreshing its purpose in 2026, with a draft proposal to be developed ahead of the February 2026 session.  

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 31 December 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 downward trend for LLU and WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 76.5% and 75.6% respectively, by week ending 26 December 2025.

* The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections