Telecommunications Adjudicator update for November 2025

At the end of November 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 3.69 million. There are 1.13 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.40 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 at a good level. There continues to be increased activity in the customer connection space as CPs leverage their built networks. Customer connections utilising PIA have reached c2M individual connections.

Unauthorised Use: Openreach have shared data identifying areas of discrepancy for the CPs to validate and are ready to support any queries CPs may have, through the Service Management team. CPs are being reminded that the grace period to work with Openreach to notify any problem areas runs to March 2026.

Incident & Planned Works Management: We continue to monitor how this embeds into the process of Openreach/CP interaction. We have seen an uptick in incidents where overbuild activity is impacting other networks, we will continue to monitor and encourage better controls of contractors.

Beyond Build: Two areas have been highlighted and shared with the PIA Exec group members. Pole Top Capacity and Rules for Drop Cable Removal and a short Best Practice Guide for Operative Undertaking Street Works. Once feedback has been received, we will share with the wider industry groups.

Other areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Overall performance remains strong, although the order profile is subdued—approximately 13% lower year-on-year. The workstack has fallen well below 15k, which introduces challenges around fluidity and impacts reporting.

While there is broad agreement that performance is good, discussions continue regarding how performance should be measured. The delivery process has been reengineered to incorporate lessons learned from Quick Win and Swift initiatives, fundamentally changing the touchpoints for data collection and performance reporting. There has been some good work looking at the KPI metrics and what data is important for CPs to manage their customers. Documentation and process descriptions for the revised delivery model are being developed for CPs to consume.

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 covering aspects such as improving contact information, enhancements to Direct End Customer Contact, photography and labelling. 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 are being undertaken under the auspices of the CFPCG, to outline the broader expectations of industry, then will progress via SMF to complete the detail

The new Best Practice Guide to support Residential orders is in draft following collaboration between Openreach and CPs. The intent is to publish in January 2026.

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. New SOGEA migration special offers have also been announced to start 01 January 2026.

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

OTA2 voiced some concerns regarding both Industry and Openreach understanding of the complexity of the migration task for the remaining businesses on WLR. Collaborative work is ongoing to better understand and address this, with Openreach formulating how better to raise awareness amongst business customers of the need to exit analogue products by January 2027.

Customer Switching

OTS (One Touch Switching) has now passed 2 million confirmed switch trigger events being recorded by the messaging Hub operated by TOTSCo (The One Touch Switching Company), indicating large numbers of customers being successfully switched in ~15 months of the process being fully operational. There has also been a steady increase in the ‘raw’ Match Success rate reported by TOTSCo, achieving a peak of ~83% between two larger CPs.  The ‘raw’ Match success rate has been demonstrated to be appreciably lower than the ‘session’ success rate achieved by customers wishing to switch. OTA2 continue to work with CPs to understand and collaborate to identify solutions for all residential switching journeys.

OTA2 remain committed to supporting the TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process) which is available to all registered CPs and 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, along with OTA2 published Best Practice guides to aid successful switching, avoiding some of the more common causes of issues.

OTS Porting

A series of workshops will be scheduled for early 2026, focused on finalising the testing and ‘go-live’ approach for early adopters of OTS, mostly CPS who operate in a ‘vertically integrated’ manner and to collaborate further with the wholesale community in their endeavours to support OTS Porting for their channel partners.

Business Switching

A reminder that the up-issued documents associated with the Switching for Business process and message specifications can be found on the Gaining Provider Led Business Switching public - FCS website. These documents can be accessed without any need for registration. OTA2 are now also hosting the core document set of Switching for Business documents which can be found on the OTA2 website, under Best Practice Guidance – Consumer Switching.

The GPLB-SG (Gaining Provider Led Business – Steering Group – co-chaired by OTA2) and the GPLB-IPG (Industry Process Group) are now focusing on the production of Best Practice Guides designed to assist CPs in effectively using the ‘Switching for Business’ with new documents being published as they are brought to issue.        

Number Porting

The November NPPCG (Number Porting Product and Commercial Group) session included, in addition to standing agenda items, the planning for Operational support for Number Porting over the Festive period, with OTA2 once again acting at the collator, editor and publisher of CPs opening times. The refresh of attendee/distribution lists for all OTA2 chaired Number Porting meetings continues, with out-of-date details being removed or replaced by the correct representatives.  

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 29 November 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 downward trend for LLU and WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 79.3% and 77.9% respectively, by week ending 28 November 2025.

* The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections