Telecommunications Adjudicator update for February 2026

At the end of February 2026, the number of unbundled lines stands at 3.38 million. There are 1.01 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.36 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): There has been a considerable amount of activity from CPs registering potential UU cases before the end of the declaration period. At the time of writing this trend is continuing through March.  

As previously reported Joint Site Visits have come under renewed focus as there have been an increasing number of failures being reported.  Openreach have kicked off an improvement plan activity which need to work across the Openreach organisation and with their contract partners. CPs are requested to raise cases where any JSV’s fail or they are not notified or where contractors approach them directly. The work will cover both incidents and planned works.

Beyond Build: The outline draft of a framework for managing pole top capacity has been shared with CPs and Openreach for which we are awaiting comment.

Other areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Overall performance remains strong, although the order profile is subdued—approximately 17% lower year-on-year. The workstack remains below c14.5k The workstack age continues to hold in good shape with an average of 31.8 days. The current order delivery profile looks very heathy as shown below:

•  5 days - 14%
• 10 days - 39%
• 15 days - 58%
• 20 days - 69%
• 30 days - 83%

Changes to the Order Handling Desk continue to have some challenges which are being managed and reported on at the ESF.

Areas of Interest:

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

Exchange Exit: Most major CPs have signed up for the commercial offer.    

Copper and Fibre

The Business IWG initiative is continuing. The particular areas of focus are:

• Business grade contact and support
• On-the-day delivery excellence
• Information quality and flow throughout the order journey

The discussions to agree the 2026/27 targets for the FTTP customer experience metrics were concluded during February. CPs had also requested that Openreach introduce a RAG status supporting the measures.  It has been agreed to trial an Openreach proposal through to September via the SMF, then for industry and Openreach to review what changes might be required.

The Openreach Proof of Concept covering pre-emptive FTTP repair incidents and PEWs where Openreach communicate directly with those customers who have been affected continuing, having been extended geographically to gain additional volume.  

Openreach are proposing to test offering translated Direct End Customer Communications on a trial basis via a link and to provide engineers access to on-the-day translation tools as language issues have been identified as impacting on-the-day success.

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 bhave still to update industry on any new timescale.

There are approximately 2.5m WLR lines remaining, with a run rate of reductions of 44k per week, which is below the required run rate.  Business lines remain particularly problematic and are further behind the required run rate than residential, which is an issue that has been flagged by OTA2 for some time. 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.  

Customer Switching

OTS (One Touch Switching) for residential customers continues to support high numbers of successful switches. The OTS-IPG (Industry Process Group), co-chaired by OTA2, is working on uplifted Best Practice Guides, most notably for Number Porting as part of an OTS journey, which describes how to better integrate porting into the switching journey. The revised guide will include updates to the guidance for OTS Porting (same day porting, when supported by the GRCP following the OTS process) alongside general updates reflecting the knowledge and experience gained from operating OTS and switching over 2 million customers.   

The TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process), available to all registered CPs, continues to register new members, with the process to do so and the circulation of that registry facilitated by OTA2.  TETP documentation is published on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching. Also on the site are a number of OTA2 authored guides for Switching and Working Line Takeover, created to help CPs avoid erroneous transfers and improve their swithcing journeys.  

Business Switching

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. Best Practice Guides are being created and published by the GPLB-IPG, with considerable work in the Matching and Porting areas, and pre-publication reviews now underway.  

Number Porting

February’s NPESG (Number Porting Executive Steering Group) considered feedback from the working groups looking into CLoA (Customer Letter of Authority), Cancellation of Port orders and guidance for CPs declaring ‘Data Freeze’ against their porting activities. The undertaking to define and uplift the future role of the NPESG continues, with feedback being sought from leading industry figures.   

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 28 February 2026 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 steady trend for LLU and WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 81.1% and 78.7% respectively, by week ending 27 February 2026. 

* The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections