BT Wholesale, which supplies a number of UK ISPs with broadband services, has confirmed to ISPreview that they’re investigating an issue with consumer switching between providers via the One Touch Switching (OTS) process that appears to have been introduced on Monday and is disrupting some ISP switches and internet connections.
According to one of the ISPs that reported it to ISPreview earlier in the week: “Basically any order going in, regardless of any dates that are selected for the transfer, are ignored, and they become ceased records within hours as they are basically expecting it to complete the next day. We have said to them, if a customer wants next day, great, lovely improvement, but if a customer wants to move in 30 days, they need to honour that.”
Naturally, some consumers like to elect a future switching date in order to work around contract end-dates and other real-life challenges, although Ofcom’s OTS rules generally require ISPs to try and switch consumers within 1 working day (“if technically possible“). This may help to explain BTW’s change, but their approach is causing problems. “We have a load of inbound transfers where now the old connection is ceased, but the new dates have all not been honoured, so customers are not connected with either provider,” said the ISP.
At the time of writing, we don’t know how many consumers and ISPs are being impacted by this problem, but one of the affected customers (David) told ISPreview today: “I now no longer have an internet connection. The BTW fix has effectively ceased my FTTP service.” The problems have also been picked up by Thinkbroadband.
A BT spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We are aware of an issue with One Touch Switching and are looking into this as an urgent priority.”
The hope is that a solution can be found to this sooner, rather than later, as consumers affected by it seem to have been left in limbo. But we’ve currently only seen a very tiny number of reports.