Telecommunications Adjudicator update for September 2025

At the end of September 2025, the number of unbundled lines stands at 3.96 million. There are 1.22 million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.43 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: Contract schedules have been agreed and notified (90 Day clock now running). Openreach have shared data showing areas of discrepancy for the CPs to validate.

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

Beyond Build: Outline of target areas agreed with an initial plan of works set to kick off in November. Presentation to be given at the Ofcom CEO round table.

Other areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• Connecting Customers

Ethernet

Overall Performance is good. The order profile remains subdued, compared year on year it is circa 12% lower. The workstack has dropped well below 16k, which begins to raise some challenges with fluidity and the impact on reporting.

Whilst there is consensus that performance is good, the validity of the reporting KPI suite is being questioned by industry. The speed of delivery at the front and the effective removal of the contracting point at KCI2+5days means that CPs are questioning how they reshape their engagement processes to ensure they don’t get delivery of orders which may be speculative. There is work for both the product groups and service groups to ensure we have clear definition.

Areas of interest:

EAD2:  Good progress trial orders beginning to flow.

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 the KCI2 Assure process, utilised for complex orders, was undertaken between industry and Openreach over the first half of 2025. Several areas of focus were agreed and are being implemented.  Openreach anticipate performance to improve over the remainder of the FY and this will be tracked as BAU against a set of aspirational targets. It was agreed that the IWG had fulfilled its original intent, so no further meetings are planned based on the completion and impact of the work packages agreed.

Industry engagement to develop a set of customer centric FTTP metrics was completed in the quarter with 8 FTTP metrics agreed between CPs and Openreach.  These metrics, plus the initial targets (where applicable) were communicated via the CFPCG and SMF in September, and will be reported monthly to SMF and quarterly to CFPCG.  The discussions to agree the 2026/27 targets will commence end Q4 2025.

A final version of the Best Practice Guide to support Business Standard orders has been published following agreement by Industry.  The Openreach intent is to now progress to a review of the various Residential BPG for FTTP.

Discussions between CPs and Openreach regarding contract changes to support the Telecom Security Act remain problematic with little progress made. CPs and Openreach consider that the TSA requirements are less suitable to network operators as suppliers, as opposed to equipment vendors. There was also, consensus that an industry attestation scheme would be highly beneficial in overcoming many of the contractual issues identified. This needs to be progressed via NICC and CPs were asked, via their NICC representative to support the development of such a scheme. In the absence of an attestation scheme, CPs agreed to review the M10 measures and identify those where they need Openreach assurance. CPs have been asked to consider this in the context of the sensitivity of the detail they are requesting Openreach share and frame their asks appropriately.

SOTAP Analogue pilot volumes are now at a level that has provided Openreach with confidence of its service performance and has commenced internal governance approval for launch.  

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.

There are approximately 3.4m WLR lines remaining, which requires a run rate of circa 50k per week to reach zero by January 2027. The full launch of the Prove Telecare capability in mid-October will allow a significant cohort within this residual base 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

The OTS process has recently celebrated its first anniversary since launch and continues to provide the only regulatory compliant process for switching residential customer’s NBICS (Number Based Interpersonal Communications Service – fixed ‘Voice’) and IAS (Internet Access Service – fixed ‘broadband’) between retail providers. With the indicated volumes of successful switches significantly beyond 1.5 million, the process is being extensively used by over 340 registered RCPs (Retail Communications Providers). OTA2 continue to support the OTS-IPG (Industry Process Group) in examining and resolving issues within the agreed process, identifying opportunities for RCPs to improve their use of OTS and their interactions with other RCPs.

While some issues persist, not least the misunderstanding around the use of response codes by some RCPs and the desire to improve the end-to-end matching experience for customers as much as is possible, the OTS solution is proving resilient to the high number of messages that are being processed every day (~2 million messages per month).

OTA2 continue to work with all CPs to reduce the small, but persistent, volume of Erroneous transfers that persist in networks that support ‘intra switching’ between CPs over the same infrastructure. There is no single identified cause for the setting up of a switch that subsequently proves to be erroneous, with examples of issues being discovered in the Gaining CP’s solution, the Losing CP’s response to notifications, Network and CP data integrity and, occasionally, customer behaviour. CPs are encouraged to consider recommendations in OTA2 published Best Practice guides which can be found on our website www.offta.org.uk/best-practice-guide in the ‘Consumer Switching’ section

The TETP (Tactical Erroneous Transfer Process) remains available to all registered CPs and supports collaboration between gaining and losing CPs to resolve suspected Erroneous Transfers before a customer is impacted.

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

The OTS Porting Focus group (chaired by OTA2) has now shifted its emphasis onto the delivery of functionality into both test and live environments, working with the leading CPs (those who’s developments are most advanced) to formulate an outline plan and timescales for OTS Porting to become available to use for the subscribing parties.

The challenges of aligning OTS using Retail CPs, their supply chains and wholesale Voice Service Providers (including Hosts and Range Holders) are manyfold, but progress is being made and there is increasing confidence that functionality will become available for those wishing to utilise it in early 2026.

More work is taking place within the wholesaler Voice Service Provider community, which will provide them with a solution option to support their channel partners (e.g. the retail CPs) to opt in to OTS Porting depending on their customer base (OTS Porting is for Residential customers only) and their own ability to support the principle of reciprocity which underpins the process.           

Business Switching

A reminder to all that the GPLB-SG (Gaining Provider Led Business - Steering Group, which is OTA2 co-chaired) and GPLB-IPG (Industry Process Group) have up-issued their ‘Switching for Business’ documentation, including Process V3.0, Message Specification 1.0.0, Response codes V3.0, Matching Guidance V1.0, Principles V7.0 and much more. All of which can be found on the Gaining Provider Led Business Switching public - FCS website, which does not require registration to view and that all these documents are now under formal change control. This means that they will not be modified without due process, authorisation and communication.  The GPLB-SG will be issuing a communication shortly with more details and appreciate that with the documents now formally in place, that Business CPs can more confidently assess the development required for them to consume the ‘Switching for Business’ process and meet their regulatory obligations.

The GPLB-SG and IPG will continue to work closely with TOTSCo and the MAP (Managed Access Provider) community to ensure a solid understanding of the process is in place and that where necessary additional Best Practise Guides can be produced to aid CPs in successfully integrating this new process into their operations.     

Number Porting

Due to holidays and key industry experts being unavailable, September was something of a quiet month, but good progress was made in the OTA2 run session to discuss the impacts of All-IP on multi-number porting. In a future where porting limitations imposed by DDI on analogue exchanges are no longer a factor, Industry had requested a review of what this might mean for the current porting process. A small focus group created and hosted by OTA2 assessed what impacts there would be, and how/if the existing process was still fit for purpose. The meeting output is still under review, but a strong consensus has been achieved on the principles of multi-number porting and how to move forwards within the existing onward routing framework that is used in the UK. A full report will be presented to the November NPPCG.

The Number Porting community continue to monitor the various government led initiatives to reduce telephone fraud, taking updates and feedback from industry leaders who are representing fixed line Voice Service providers.    

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 30 September 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 but upward for WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 82.3% and 78.7% respectively, by week ending 26 September 2025.

*The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections