Telecommunications Adjudicator update for May 2024

An update on the principle areas of project activity being led by OTA2 in May 2024.

See the latest charts

At the end of May 2024, the number of unbundled lines stands at 6.05 million. There are 2.03million WLR lines and the number of telephone numbers using CPS is 0.78 million. *

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

Passive Infrastructure Access

Operational performance remains good.

Whereabouts compliance: Openreach have shared their revised measurement proposals with industry. We are in the period of soft launch and data is being shared with CPs.

Incident & Planned Works Management: We have now seen the first major incident with the long term leakage of petrol into the ground in Bramley Surrey. This is a significant event and once it is remediated there will be a need to assess if the guidance documents account for such incidents.

Areas of interest:

• Health & Safety and good working practices
• NA Evidence and quality documentation for CPs to able to instruct their field resources.
• Connecting Customers
• Whereabouts compliance

Ethernet

Performance remains steady.

The order profile remains very much the same as we have reported in recent months. EAD has continued to grow whilst the other order types have dropped back, overall the order profile is c1500 per week. Completion rate of c1100 orders per week has continued through May. The workstack continues to remain stable at around 20k.

Working through the ESF in collaboration with CPs it has been agreed to begin to drive a focus into the orders which are more challenged and are outliers to the normal performance.

Areas of interest

EAD2: Proposals around Self appointing and options for upgrade of service have been shared at the IWG for CP consideration.

Exchange Exit: Openreach have shared their plans for a reset of the customer engagement. The new proposals recognise the need to build the plan from the bottom-up, circuit by circuit. The timescale for engagement has been published, starting with Space &Power and closely followed by Ethernet.

Copper and Fibre

Industry engagement to review FTTP metrics is continuing and will run through to late summer. The aim is to define a set of Key Performance Indicators which are appropriately supported, relevant and recognised by Openreach and Industry and which will effectively track the end customer experience.

Good progress has been made regarding reviewing the KCI2 Assure process and a trial of a new ‘hybrid’, which it is hoped will improve the number of single visit completions. Openreach are due to report back in detail regarding the initial trial phase in June. Discussions have commenced on an SLG for FTTP cancellations following Openreach delay. This is being run under the 6-month WFTMR process, which puts an end date of mid-July on the negotiations, however these are currently progressing slowly. OTA2 concerns have been raised regarding this.

All-IP Steering Group

Following the announcement by BT Group to reset of the date of the PSTN switch off to 31 January 2027, Openreach has aligned the withdrawal of it’s ‘Wholesale Line Rental’ (WLR) product to this date. This change from December 2025 provides an additional 13 months for Communications Providers (CPs) to safely migrate their vulnerable customers off the PSTN. Ofcom wrote to some CPs at the end of 2023 regarding their responsibilities towards vulnerable customers with telecare alarms and made the statement that no telecare device must be left in a non-working state post migration. In view of this CPs have stopped provision orders where a telecare alarm is present and Openreach is returning any that slip through the order process. CPs and Openreach have developed a set of exemptions regarding which provision orders can proceed, which are now supported by Openreach.

The Prove Telecare development which was rescoped to allow for a full reversion of the line, remains on track for release and trial late autumn.

Openreach has now published its Phase 2 response to the Exchange Exit consultation and briefed industry on its approach to progressing discussions. Subsequently Openreach has taken onboard CP feedback regarding the scale of collaboration activity envisaged and has scaled back the number of industry working groups but also adopted the approach of working through the detail of a couple of exchanges to flush out the issues, challenges and learnings for industry and Openreach.

Customer Switching

12 September 2024 remains the target date for ‘go-live’ of OTS (One Touch Switching) for all CPs with residential end customers. CPs are already trialling orders through the OTS process with plans to ‘ramp-up’ volumes ahead of the September date. OTA2 remain heavily involved with TOTSCo, CPs and Ofcom in helping industry meet the ‘go-live’ date.,

The GPLB-SG (Gaining Provider Led Business – Steering Group) maintains its focus on providing business customers and their CPs with a robust and improved (over NoT+) switching solution, which will work alongside OTS.

Number Porting

The Number Porting forums (NPESG – Number Porting Executive Steering Group and NPPCG – Number Porting Process & Commercial Group) are run on alternating months, each focusing on the Strategic (NPESG) or more ‘day-to-day’ challenges of our industry. An upcoming strategic opportunity that will be investigated is to design, test, deploy and utilise a process to identify and correct DI (Data Integrity) issues involving ported numbers.

Service Levels

Copper and Fibre provision

Openreach FAD (First Available Appointment Date) performance nationally, over the 5-day period ending 2 June 2024 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 downward trend for WLR, achieving a 4-week rolling average of 86.5% and 81.5% respectively, by week ending 24 May 2024.

*The figures quoted exclude BT downstream connections

Signed David Halliday