Telecommunications Adjudicator update for June 2025

At the end of June 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 4.36 million. There are 1.35 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.48 million.  *

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

Passive Infrastructure Access

Demand remains flat and operational performance remains good.

Unauthorised Use: Openreach have reviewed the inputs from the CP community and provided a revised final offer. CPs have responded and Openreach are now taking the proposals through their internal governance process. An update will be given at the next PIA PCG.

Incident & Planned Works Management: We continue to monitor how this embeds into the process of Openreach/CP interaction.

Beyond Build: We have seen good interaction on the outline paper and received feedback from 4 CPs/interest groups. Aiming for a first draft plan based on feedback by the end of July.

Other areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Performance is good. The order profile remains slightly subdued, compared year on year it is circa 8% lower. The workstack has dropped below 17k. Planning performance forKCI1.1 at day 6/8 is extremely low at 42%, there is some question around the validity of this as a measure with the advent of Quick Wins and more so Swift where orders are completing on average in 10 days. KCI2 remains extremely close to the target of 70% at 69%. If the quick win deliveries are added the outcome is 77%. Overall, the delivery performance looks very good.

Areas of interest:

EAD2:  The product is continuing to be developed, and the aim is to still hit the target for trials, despite the previously announced delay for the TAR.

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.  Following a further workshop held in early April several areas of focus and approach have been agreed which will be progressed collaboratively. Based on the work to date and on the areas agreed Openreach anticipate an improved performance over the remainder of the FY. The aspirational targets for this have been communicated to industry. The next workshop is planned for early Autumn.

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 24/25 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, although industry has sought clarification on some aspects of the detailed definitions. Discussions on one 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.  Industry has also raised questions relating to agreement of future targets, and also of any commercial consequences of targets not being met.

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. Some issues were identified but were resolved prior July. A draft Best Practice Guide to support Business Standard orders has been circulated to Industry for comment.

Openreach has extended the pilot for FTTP at Uninhabitable Locations by 12-months as it is anticipated that more time is required to reach the volumes required to meet the pilot success criteria.

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. Openreach received some late industry feedback which affected the timetable, but this will be formally briefed out shortly. 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) is, via the TOTSCo Hub. Published data is now reporting volumes of ‘Switch Order’ and ‘Switch Trigger’ messages that indicate ~150k-190K residential switches per month are passing through the OTS process. More information can be found at the TOTSCo website: Hub Operations Info - TOTSCo. These volumes are very encouraging, but it is acknowledged that more can still be done to improve key areas such as ‘Matching’ and the accuracy of ‘response codes’ send by CPs. OTA2 continue to work with TOTSCo and CP customers to investigate these areas and assist CPs in improving their performance and the end customer switching experience.

The TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process) member directory continues to expand, with positive feedback on the performance of the process amongst registered CPs. OTA2 continue to support Industry in this area, leading on a performance review of TETP that will consider areas for improvement of further development.

All TETP documents can be found on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching., including the registration template for any CP wishing to join.

OTS Porting

Tentative dates for Test and Trial support have been submitted to OTA2 by key CPs, who mostly operate a ‘vertically integrated’ model and the next scheduled meeting agenda is to work through a test use case schedule that will form part of the move to full implementation, and will then form part of a Best Practise pack for future adopters of the OTS Porting process to follow.

Wholesaler process documentation is underway, with a target to complete and submit for peer review before and of July 2025.       

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. TOTSCo have announced their intention to support the GPLB process via their Hub, and have already started to on-board CPs, additionally TOTSCo have confirmed a number of MAPs (Managed Access Providers) are also registered and will be developing solutions for CPs not wishing to directly interface into the Hub.

A short introduction to GPL Business Switching has been produced as a ‘Webinar’ and can be found on the public facing website :  Gaining Provider Led Business Switching public - FCS alongside the process, message specifications and supporting information. (Please note that you do not need to be an FCS member to access this area).  

Number Porting

  The OTA2 chaired NPESG (Number Porting Executive Steering Group) is busy considering the broader impacts of UK numbers converting to VoIP (as part of the drive towards All-IP) which include the existing Number Porting processes (Porting Emergency Restoration, Emergency Service database population, etc) alongside the opportunities that may arise for industry-wide improvement and fundamental change. NPPCG (Number Porting Process and Commercial Group), also OTA2 chaired, work through lower-level issues that are challenging the daily operations of CPs who support these sessions. The issue of wholesale transfers (which are not end customer switches) continues to be a challenge, despite an agreed Best Practice process, as the multiple parties involved have commercial impacts and the scenario is not covered by regulatory policy - in most cases a solution can be found, but not all.      

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

  Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 30 June 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 steady trend for LLU and WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 82.9% and 82.6% respectively, by week ending 27 May 2025 .

*The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections