One Touch Switching – Further Delays

The One Touch Switching Platform is designed as a way to simplify the migration of broadband services between providers. The project has been marred with delays after delays, and few people are surprised by the latest development.

The One Touch Switching Company has published a bulletin to announce a delay to the planned go-live date of 14 March 2024:

Since announcing the planned One Touch Switch (OTS) go-live date of 14 March 2024, industry engagement has increased significantly with over 130 users having now onboarded to the TOTSCo hub.

However, fewer than 20 users have connected to the hub to start integration testing. In addition, experience shows that establishing this connection can take some time, highlighting the need for all users to start their testing journeys as early as possible.

Last week, some larger CPs informed us that there is now insufficient time to complete industry- wide testing and trials before the planned go-live date. Regrettably therefore, we must acknowledge that the 14 March 2024 target is no longer achievable.

We feel that it is imperative to work to a plan date. We will work with industry to determine a revised date, which we will communicate along with a comprehensive set of frequently asked questions as soon as possible

The One Touch Switching Company Bulletin – 13 December 2023

ISPreview contacted Ofcom who issued a brief statement stating they will be demanding answers from the major providers.

This is after an update only three weeks ago from the TOTSCO CEO confirming testing has “ramped up in earnest”.

Update Thursday 14th December 2023 Added a statement from Uswitch

Further delays to the implementation of One-Touch Switch[1] – a simpler unified broadband switching process – mean it will be more than a year since the deadline has passed.

This is a serious blow for broadband customers and another incredibly disappointing failure from the industry.

Ofcom’s April 2023 deadline was set back in 2021, and now providers will fail to meet their already-late target of 14th March 2024. So far, no providers have faced any enforcement penalties from the regulator.

Reforming the broadband switching process is important to help future-proof the system, while levelling the playing field between smaller broadband networks and Openreach. This will in turn help drive competition for better deals and improved services by increasing consumer confidence when shopping around.

We urgently call on the industry to set a new target date, and for providers to invest the appropriate resources into making One Touch Switch happen as soon as possible. This cannot be left in limbo.

While the regulator is threatening to use the ‘full force’ of its enforcement powers to hold providers to account – it must now do whatever it takes to hold providers to deadlines and allow consumers access to simpler switching, regardless of who are they switching from or to.

Richard Neudegg, director of regulation at Uswitch.com

We should add that while broadband switching has been simple enough for millions of migrations each year, a key driver for the new switching system is to make switching between different physical networks simpler for the public. A big selling point for the One Touch Switching process is that the ten day anti-slamming delay of the current gaining provider led process will be removed, thus enabling faster switching, but that same day or next day speed of switch will likely only apply to ‘same network’ switches. The OTS system we are told has protections to stop people from entering correct data to start a switch without your permission, but we’ve not seen concrete testing of this yet. Setting up comms with TOTSco and passing the offline testing is probably not particularly difficult, the difficulties will come when exposed to all the variations of the real world, for example, people who work from home and have multiple connections, or people who want to retain a few weeks of overlap between two services.

The challenges of switching are such that we still see people complaining about the inability to migrate between retailers on at least one wholesale network without having to cease service and start the service.