The UK Liberal Democrats have today become the first big political party to publish their manifesto for the 2024 General Election (4th July), which includes a couple of broadband and internet related commitments. But as usual with these things, there’s a lack of detail in terms of funding and timescales etc.

Prior to today we knew very little about the LibDems position on matters of telecoms and internet connectivity, which is largely because they haven’t, in recent years, really made it into a particularly audible talking point of their party. In addition, the party’s last big manifesto in 2019 was light on detail and included a vague commitment to “installing hyper-fast, fibre-optic broadband across the UK.”

The 2019 manifesto also talked about prioritising SME businesses in the rollout of “hyper-fast broadband” and of ensuring that “all households and businesses have access to superfast broadband (30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload)“, which we took as possibly being a complementary reference to their desire for a stronger Universal Service Obligation (USO).

The big news today is that the LibDem’s 2024 UK General Election Manifesto (PDF) has just been published, but we couldn’t find any mention of mobile network connectivity. So far as we can tell from their website, the document contains only two commitments related to broadband and internet services:

1. “Ensure that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, including in rural and remote communities, and support local bespoke solutions so that no property is left out.“

2. “Ending the bulk collection of communications data and internet connection records.“

The lack of any solid targets, funding or useful detail makes it hard to know how the party’s pledge on gigabit broadband differs, if at all, from that of the current Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which aims to achieve the same goal by the end of 2030 and is already testing various local solutions in some of the remotest parts of the UK. Suffice to say, this may be seen as merely pledging continuity with the current scheme.

The second point, which talks about the often controversial bulk collection of Internet Connection Records (IRC) by UK ISPs, is a reference to the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (aka – “snoopers charter“) and the current Government’s work to expand those powers (here). Clearly, the LibDem’s are looking to return to a more pro-privacy orientated approach, which will no doubt attract support among those who feel the Government may have gone too far.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has issued a technical update on their investigation into the UK’s public cloud infrastructure services market, which is currently dominated by Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure). As part of this, the CMA hints that they’re “not currently minded to prioritise further consideration of structural or operational separation remedies” (e.g. divestment).

Just to recap. Ofcom formally referred the market to the CMA in October 2023 (here), which came after the regulator found that high fees for transferring data out, committed spend discounts and technical restrictions were making it difficult for business customers to switch cloud provider or use multiple providers. Ofcom feared that, if left unchecked, “competition could deteriorate in a critical digital market for the UK economy“.

Ofcom’s work focused on ‘cloud infrastructure services’, which are built on physical servers and virtual machines hosted in data centres around the world. Cloud infrastructure provides the foundation for how software applications are developed and run. This consists of products called infrastructure as a service (IaaS), which includes storage, computing and networking, and platform as a service (PaaS), which includes the software tools needed to build and run applications.

The CMA could, if it were – like Ofcom before – to find fault with the market, impose a broad range of remedies, including market-opening measures, structural measures, or recommendations to Government (or other regulatory bodies) to change policy, legislation, or regulatory frameworks.

The competition watchdog has now posted a number of new documents as part of this investigation, which includes one that examines the potential remedies (PDF). Such remedies are typically classified as either “structural” or “behavioural“. Structural remedies in market investigations are generally one-off measures that seek to increase competition by altering the competitive structure of the market (e.g. divesting a business unit or set of assets).

By comparison, behavioural remedies are generally ongoing measures that are designed to regulate or constrain the behaviour of parties in a market and/or empower customers to make effective choices (e.g. making it easier to switch companies, forcing greater informational transparency and so forth).

The CMA’s Updated Viewpoint

At this point it’s very important to stress that the CMA hasn’t yet come to a firm conclusion on anything, although we are expecting them to eventually propose a “package of measures“. The new document gives us an early glimpse into the CMA’s emerging views on structural remedies and things like operational separation.

CMA’s Position on Structural Remedies

Given that we have identified alternative potential remedies, discussed in working papers, and the initial concerns we have [identified], we are not currently minded to prioritise further consideration of structural or operational separation remedies. However, we would welcome responses on our emerging views in this area.

Assuming this position holds, then that would leave the CMA to focus more on behavioural remedies, which they say are “likely to be targeted on reducing barriers to switching and/or using a multi-cloud approach for customers, and reducing barriers to entry and expansion for rival cloud providers,” among other things.

The CMA currently expects to publish their provisional findings in September or October 2024. After that a final decision must be made and published by the statutory deadline of 4th April 2025.

News

The partnership is Vodafone’s 11th landing for the 2Africa cable globally 

Vodafone has landed the 2Africa subsea cable system in Bude, Cornwall. The cable is the largest subsea cable project in the world, spanning 45,000 kilometers to connect Europe, Asia, and Africa once it is fully operational.   

Once complete the cable will benefit more than 3 billion people in 33 countries, 30% of the global population. 

As the cable’s lead UK landing partner, Vodafone will be responsible for bringing the cable to the UK shores, burying it, connecting it to the landing station and providing onward connectivity to the London area. Strangely, Vodafone has named its portion of the cable “SHARP” standing for ‘The System Honouring the Achievements of Rick Perry’, after the company’s Head of Subsea Partnerships, Rick Perry. 

Perry said that “2Africa is the world’s most ambitious cable system and will help to narrow the digital divide in Africa,” in the press release. 

The company says that the cable “will facilitate faster and more reliable connectivity for UK businesses wanting to deliver digital services to Africa, and vice versa.” 

The cable was first announced in May 2020, by a consortium comprised of global giants such as China Mobile, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC. Alcatel Submarine Networks is leading the cable’s manufacture and installation. The project is expected to be completed by the end of this year. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter 

Also in the news:
AI is shaking up the submarine cable ecosystem
Cyber and other threats to submarine cables
Old copper networks: A gold mine for telcos?

Spotlight Series Article

By Patrick Donegan, Founder and Principal Analyst at HardenStance

I recently attended Total Telecom’s outstanding ‘Submarine Networks EMEA 2024’ to learn about this industry’s cybersecurity challenges. Cybersecurity has tended to have a fairly low profile in the sector, largely because nearly all incidents arise from physical world disruption. Moreover incidents nearly all arise from benign causes –  trawlers casting their nets and other vessels dragging anchors, or natural world events like seismic activity on the ocean floor.

Some speakers and exhibitors showed a weary, eyerolling, frustration at the media’s preference for reporting the 1% of Bond film-themed incidents of nation state-directed vessels carrying out nefarious attacks on cables at sea. For them, the 99% of benign incidents impose a much bigger total cost on the industry so that’s where the reporting should focus.

A clear majority at the event nevertheless recognised that malicious incidents pose a substantially greater risk now than they did even just a year or two ago. One such incident occurred in the Baltic Sea last October when Finland and Estonia attributed cuts to not one but four fibre optic cables and a gas pipeline to a Chinese container ship and Russian-flagged vessel that were in the area. Several people also referred to at least three major incidents in Africa in the last year – each one impacting three or more cables at a time. The majority of opinion I heard pointed to the severity of incidents growing, the risk from malicious activity by nation states growing, and a significant or even strong correlation between the two trends.

Not surprisingly, there is now a relentless focus on taking already well-advanced global and regional route diversity to still more advanced levels. Several speakers shared new build plans, with route diversity to the fore in all their talks. Google’s recent announcement of ‘Umoja’, the world’s first subsea cable directly linking South Africa and Australia, appears to have taken even some seasoned industry leaders by surprise with its ambition.

This is the world of physical risk that cyber threats to the submarine cable ecosystem fit into. From what I was able to ascertain, the  cyberattacks that the sector’s cyber defenders are focused on are grouped into three areas.

The first is corruption of the systems that monitor cable activity on the ocean floor, either by an insider or a remote hacker. These systems are housed in modern, fit-for-purpose, Network Operations Centre (NOC) and Security Operations Centre (SOC) facilities or in less well-equipped variants built at lower cost. The consensus I heard is that both models are well represented across the world’s more than 500 submarine cable systems and more than 1,500 landing stations. Malicious manipulation of these critical monitoring systems could allow adversaries to configure alerts so that they mislead the cable’s owners and stakeholders that everything is fine when it isn’t. It could also mislead them as to the location of a fault when rapid repair times are crucial to the millions of customers that depend on these cables being available.
The second area is a physical breach of a landing station. Depending on how it’s configured, this could yield access to monitoring systems or even the cable’s user traffic. The location of most landing stations isn’t a secret. Some of them are surprisingly open to passers-by stumbling across them on an afternoon walk along the shore. The physical security surrounding them, what they house and how it’s configured, all vary considerably. In developed countries they may be heavily reinforced and staffed with stringent access management. In less developed countries they may be unmanned with not much more than a padlock for physical security. According to multiple individuals I spoke with, most traffic running on submarine cables is unencrypted today. Hence, in cases where cables terminate at a landing site (rather than further in-land at a data centre), there is a theoretical opportunity for an exceptionally skilled, heavily funded, hacker to cut and splice the cable and access the traffic. Even where traffic is encrypted, there’s still the risk of Store Now Decrypt Later (SNDL) attacks, whereby traffic is copied and stored until a powerful enough quantum computer can break contemporary crypto standards.
The third type is the stuff of a Bond film. It consists of a submarine operating at depths low enough to reach the ocean floor (as it happens, Russian Akula class subs can dive to below 1,000 metres). Once it’s guided to the right position above a target cable, a hatch is opened, and the cable is somehow hoisted inside. Some extravagantly talented individual then proceeds to cut and splice the cable – without the 15,000 volts running through the cable to power the transponders blowing the vessel and its crew to smithereens. They then proceed to access the user traffic.Bear with me, here. Several knowledgeable people at Submarine Networks EMEA 2024 assured me that this is a scenario which, while almost certainly not feasible today, is nevertheless one that national security agencies take very seriously. In the case of most cables deployed in the last 10 years or so, encryption is there to be switched on when needed, although US export controls get in the way of universal, frictionless implementations. Encryption wouldn’t mitigate the problem completely, either. It wouldn’t protect against the hypothetical hacker in the submarine copying the encrypted data according to an underwater SNDL attack – a USNDL attack perhaps? With one single fibre pair on a transatlantic cable carrying as much as 25 terabit/s, that submarine is also going to need one hell of a lot of data storage for this cyber-attack. On the defender side, there is also ongoing research into extending the use of seismic sensing technology to apply it to detect physical tampering with the cables.

Nation state threats of all kinds to are clearly growing in the submarine cable business. Throughout the two days, speakers repeatedly referred to a marked uptick in government agencies engaging much more deeply in submarine cable security now. This will make its way into demands for higher standards of cybersecurity – and higher investment to fund it.

Consumer broadband ISP, phone, mobile and TV provider EE (BT), which has long bundled Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on some of their UK packages, has today followed Microsoft’s announcement about the availability of their popular Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6 video game by confirming that their customers will also be able to benefit.

Firstly, for those not on Game Pass Ultimate but who may still have an interest, EE is now offering pre-orders for COD: Black Ops 6 from the EE store. Customers can also register their interest to learn more about all of the announcements from the Xbox Games Showcase coming to EE here – What’s new at EE.

Otherwise, for packages where EE offers Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, the new COD game will be available to play on day one of release. Customers can optionally also add the service to their monthly bill, and it is also available to anyone with an EE ID via the EE App, for £12 per month.

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today officially confirmed that they’ve started rolling out Hiya’s new Brand ID technology to customers for free, which is a caller identification solution that can reduce the number of calls customers receive from unknown numbers (e.g. scammers) by providing details of the organisation making the call.

The news isn’t all that surprising as VMO2 announced in February 2024 that they’d become the second major UK telecoms provider, after BT (EE), to adopt Hiya’s AI-based technologies for call filtering and management (here). Brand ID forms a part of Hiya’s portfolio of solutions, and so it seemed inevitable that O2 might adopt it, with the operator beginning this process last month.

According to today’s official announcement, the tool will act as an anti-fraud filter, only displaying caller information after verifying the company making the call. The technology is being rolled out automatically to millions of O2 Pay Monthly and business customers over the “coming months“, starting with those using Android smartphones.

Around 150 UK businesses are already said to have signed up to the service, including major banks and insurers, although clearly this also means that many more have yet to join. The new feature comes as research from Hiya reveals that nearly half – 46% – of unidentified calls are ignored, with 92% of people admitting they suspect unidentified calls to be fraudulent.

Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud at Virgin Media O2, said:

“As part of our relentless efforts to stop the scammers, we’re rolling out next-generation caller ID to provide our customers with reliable information about who is calling before they even pick up the phone.

By giving them confidence in who is calling and why, customers will be better able to spot fraudulent call attempts and ensure they’re only speaking to people and organisations they want to.

With more than a hundred major UK businesses already signed up to the service, this free feature will help give our customers greater peace of mind.”

The new service is being run alongside O2’s existing fraud protection measures, which includes AI-powered spam text detection technology that has already prevented more than 89 million fraudulent texts from reaching customers in 2023 alone. All of this is integrated at the network-level, which means that customers don’t need to do anything in order to benefit.

Later this year, O2 will also introduce Call Defence, another free AI-powered spam fighting tool to help further protect mobile customers from fraud. Hiya’s Adaptive AI system will analyse a call number behaviour to determine whether a call is suspected scam or spam labelling the call accordingly and thereby helps keep customers safe from scammers.

Phone spam and fraud are persistent challenges for telco carriers worldwide. Scammers are constantly evolving their methods looking for new ways to gain personal information from customers, which is why VMO2 are also urging all mobile customers to report suspicious texts for free by forwarding them on to 7726.

Alternative network builder and gigabit broadband ISP toob, which is deploying a full fibre (FTTP) network across parts of South England (they’re also sharing some of CityFibre’s infrastructure), has recently revealed that they’ve managed to grow their customer base to over 50,000 (up from 20,000 a year ago).

The Hampshire-based operator was originally backed by £75m from the Amber Infrastructure Group (here) and “up to” £87.5m from the Sequoia Economic Infrastructure Income Fund (here). During 2023 the operator also secured £160m of additional funding (debt financing) from Ares Management‘s Infrastructure Debt strategy (here), which could be upsized to £300m over time to support growth.

However, toob did recently run into a few challenges, which resulted in some redundancies and a change of build strategy (here). But the positive news today is that toob recently confirmed having passed the milestone of 50,000 customers, which is more than double the 20,000 they had this time last year.

The provider doesn’t appear to have put out a press release about this (we spotted it via social media), which is a shame as this seems to be a good result. On the other hand, toob hasn’t issued an update on their network coverage in over a year, which makes it difficult to examine their relative take-up rate. So far as we can tell, the 50,000 figure was first stated on their website during early May 2024.

The Lifford Gardens and The Sands residents association, which represents part of Broadway (village) in Worcestershire (England), has been granted a Judicial Review (JR) in the High Court that may allow them to challenge the local council’s decision to allow deployment of a new gigabit-capable broadband network using wood poles.

Network operators often deploy 9-12 metre high wood poles to help run their overhead cables, which are a very common sight across the UK (millions have been built). Such poles are quick and cost-effective to build, can be deployed into areas where there may be no space or access deal to safely put new underground cables, are less disruptive (avoiding the noise, traffic restrictions and damage to pavements of trenching) and can be built under Permitted Development (PD) rights with only minimal prior notice.

However, not everybody is a fan and a growing number of people in areas where poles are being deployed have often voiced objections, particularly when they’ve been rolled out into an area that hasn’t previously had them before. Residents typically find the new erections ugly, obstructive, and often complain about the lack of effective prior consultation.

The issue recently came to somewhat of a head after the Government stepped in and called on network operators to “limit installation of telegraph poles” (here and here), albeit largely by reiterating the rules that operators already follow.

The Government has also called on Ofcom to provide guidance to local planning authorities on how to raise complaints, as well as asking them for support to tackle the challenge. But the industry regulator has warned that their powers are limited (here).

Broadway’s Sitation

The situation in the village of Broadway follows a similar trend to the one mentioned above, although in this case one of the local residents associations has decided to take a more proactive legal approach to challenging the deployment. Both Gigaclear and FullFibre Ltd are known to be deploying FTTP broadband networks in this area (Openreach also has a little FTTP), with each using a variable mix of overhead (poles) and underground (ducts) infrastructure in different areas.

The case itself largely focuses upon FullFibre’s build. However, rather than specifically going after the network operator (FullFibre is merely referenced as an “interested party“), the residents have instead been trying to secure a Judicial Review (JR) of the Wychavon District Council‘s (WDC) decision to allow such work to take place.

The case, which was heard in the High Court (Administrative / Planning Court), appears to partly reflect the fact that there are usually extra considerations for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AOBN) like those that exist in Broadway:

Extract from the Cabinet and Pole Siting Code of Practice

In National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural beauty, the Code Operator should discuss new pole locations with the relevant National Park Authority or AONB Partnership at an early stage to identify opportunities to minimise any adverse landscape impact.

The case argued that the local authority may have failed to properly interpret or take account of such key considerations, which affect the siting and appearance of the development (i.e. did the council take enough action to ensure the visual impact would indeed be minimised, so far as practicable? – this is needed for the work to be considered Permitted Development).

Some of this also touches on the question of whether an underground deployment would have been viable as an alternative to poles, which is always a tricky one for cost-sensitive network operators to balance. But other parts suggest that the local authority might have been a little too close to FullFibre Ltd.

Extract from the Residents Crowdjustice Page:

“When the cable provider first indicated that they intended to pole in Broadway, the residents, the Parish Council and the AONB Planning Officer all registered their objections to Wychavon D.C. We were all ignored as the council chose to do absolutely nothing to prevent the telegraph poles from being erected.

Residents were extremely concerned that Wychavon District Council had appointed a person who was not in planning to oversee the planning directorship dealing with the proposed installation of poles and broadband in our community, when this individual had a pre-existing relationship with the personnel of the telecoms operator (Full Fibre Ltd).

Following a freedom of information request, emails obtained between the two created a perception of bias in the minds of residents that the person appointed by the Council was in favour of the roll out of poles and overhead infrastructure.”

The good news for the residents association is that they’ve now won the ability to seek a JR, with the judge agreeing that two of the three grounds merited investigation. The third ground was only rejected as it was considered to be a duplicate of the first ground.

The Honourable Justice Eyre also agreed that “the tone of Mr Edward’s [of WDC] emails to the representatives of the Interested Party [Full Fibre Ltd] is suggestive that he regarded the exercise a joint venture in which the Defendant [WDC] and the Interested Party [Full Fibre Ltd] were engaged together in overcoming resistance to the installation of cables.”

David Harrison, Broadway Resident, told ISPreview:

“Living in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), in which we are not even allowed to erect fences or walls in our front gardens, we were amazed and disappointed when Wychavon D.C. said they could do nothing to prevent Full Fibre Heroes Ltd erecting twenty two 11 metre poles to facilitate new Ultrafast Broadband. They said “their hands were tied” as new legislation gave communication providers Permitted Development Rights and they made no effort to prevent our visual amenity being spoilt. We know they could have issued an Article 4 direction that would have then forced Full Fibre to apply for formal Planning Permission.

In March 2024 the Minister for Media & Data, Julia Lopez M.P. confirmed that even where Permitted Development Rights exist, it doesn’t mean the council have no say in the matter. We cannot understand why Wychavon D.C. made absolutely no effort to protect our village and our visual amenity. We hope that our Judicial Review will clarify the position within AONBs & Conservation Areas that were previously protected by law.”

Just to be clear. A JR is a special type of court proceeding in which a judge reviews the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body. Such reviews are designed more to investigate how a decision has been made rather than whether or not the outcome of that decision was the right one, although if successful the council might be forced into making amendments, which could set a precedent elsewhere too.

The residents association is currently in the process of using the Crowdjustice website to help them raise enough funding to support the JR. The JR case itself, assuming it does proceed (funding allowing), is expected to take place sometime later this year, possibly toward the end of autumn or later. So at present the association has only won the right to pursue a JR, which is somewhat of a test case.

The JR itself could just as easily decide that the local authority did everything correctly. However, whatever the outcome, network operators, councillors and residents should at least be able to gain greater legal clarity around the issue and this is something that would be useful for everybody to have.

The risk for locals in that, if they lose, they will be liable for the council’s costs and vice versa. The residents association is currently attempting to raise £2,000, but they will then seek to push this up to around £20,000 in order to properly fund the case.

However, the risk for the roll-out of gigabit-capable broadband is that operators could end up having to jump through extra hoops, which might slow their deployments and increase their costs. Some people would clearly celebrate this. But it could also make some builds just that bit too expensive to proceed, which seems likely to disproportionately disadvantage those in some of the most poorly served areas (i.e. those that are often among the most expensive to tackle).

We did reach out to the WDC for a comment last week and are still awaiting their response, although organisations rarely comment when the query involves an ongoing legal case. For the same reason, FullFibre Ltd declined to comment.

Some customers of mobile network operator Lyca Mobile, which is a virtual operator (MVNO) on EE’s platform in the UK, are reporting that they’ve been unable to access the provider’s latest and fastest 5G (mobile broadband) connectivity service for the around a month. Related users find that only 4G is now available to them.

The issue, which was picked up by Thinkbroadband, but which has also been spotted by members of ISPreview’s discussion forum community and via social media, appears to be affecting multiple mast sites and may have occurred after the operator’s Access Point Name (APN) settings were updated to an EE profile (58.0). But switching to Lyca’s own APN settings (example) doesn’t resolve the issue, and the same problem doesn’t impact EE’s other MVNOs.

The operator itself has acknowledged, at least to some of those affected, that an issue does exist, although they’ve been vague and haven’t put out a general statement. Lyca Mobile also lacks a proper Service Status page and hasn’t said how long it may take to resolve the problem. As above, many of those affected have been waiting for around a month and so the frustrations are starting to boil over.

Response from Lyca Mobile to Customer (Credits to Ryan)

We are sorry to know that you are unable to access the 5G network.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the lack of 5G signal in your area.

Further to your email, we are facing some 5G issue in Lycamobile network. Our technical team is actively investigating this matter to ensure that any potential network issues are addressed promptly. While we work on resolving this, please be assured that our team is committed to restoring the 5G coverage at the earliest.

At this point it’s separately worth noting that 5G connectivity problems can sometimes also occur on an operator’s network due to issues of device compatibility, although this isn’t relevant to the above issue as 5G was working for those customers before, and on the same phones.

However, Lyca Mobile is known to have had some issues with Google’s Pixel phones in the past, and one of our readers recently reported that they ran into something similar with the Xiaomi 14 on an eSIM (here). We’ve reached out to our Lyca Mobile contact for a comment on the above issue and hope to update this article early next week with their official response.

Separately, Lyca Mobile recently survived a compulsory strike-off action and its company accounts reveal that they’re currently still in dispute with HMRC over an issue related to the treatment of Value Added Tax (VAT), which could be quite costly (a provision of £99m has been recorded to reflect their current best estimate of potential exposure).

Broadband ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP) has come up with an interestingly quirky way of addressing concerns that Ofcom’s new, and much delayed, One Touch Switch (OTS) system, which aims to make it quicker and easier for consumers to switch internet providers, might make SLAMMING easier (i.e. being switched without your consent).

The new OTS approach is really just a more sophisticated messaging systems between ISPs, which expands the existing Gaining Provider Led (GPL) migration system to work across alternative networks (the old system was mostly only focused on Openreach based providers) and to action switches within just 1 day instead of 10 days “where technically possible“.

One concern with this approach is that such rapid switches could make it harder to stop SLAMMING, which is a mis-selling tactic that can occur when naughty people or ISPs trigger a switch (migration) of your service to another provider, albeit without you ever having given confirmed consent. The regulator’s existing migration rules are designed to protect against such abuse, but they’re far from perfect and so cases do still occur.

Under the current system, it tends to take around a week or more to migrate between providers on the same Openreach based network, which allows time for both providers to issue notices to customers and also affords customers the ability to request that the switch be stopped. But that’s much harder to achieve via a one-day process and, under OTS, a customer can no longer request that the switch be stopped.

Ofcom claims that the new OTS approach is designed to “safeguard against slamming“. Such safeguards include the requirement for the gaining ISP to take all reasonable steps to ensure that it does not switch customers without their consent, and in particular, that it does not engage in slamming, and that any customer who is requesting a switch is authorised to do so.

In addition, in OTS, the losing provider will be required to inform the customer of the identity of the gaining provider, which the regulator claims “should act as an additional safeguard against slamming.” But plenty of ISPs we speak with remain concerned that OTS could make the practice harder to tackle.

A Different Approach

According to the boss of Andrews & Arnold, Adrian Kennard, Ofcom’s new OTS solution “seems to also stop most ‘anti-slamming’ measures – not allowing a losing ISP to cancel a migration now!” This is arguably a bigger issue for AAISP as, under the old system, the provider could offer customers an option to pre-request that a block against switching be placed on their account to help protect against the risk of unauthorised switches.

The good news is that Adrian believes they’ve found another way of achieving this, which is based on the fact that the new system must match your surname between the losing and gaining providers. The approach is best explained by a new notice on the provider’s website.

Switching Notice

For a long time we have operated an anti-slamming option where you tell us in advance that you do not wish your broadband to be migrated to a new provider. You could then change that at any time.

However, the new One Touch Switching system works differently. We will no longer be able to reject switching. However, to start switching the new provider needs an address and surname to match. They can start a switch process in BT without, but this is less likely as the normal process for consumers, and probably most businesses, will be One Touch Switching.

Because the surname has to match, we now allow you to edit the contact name on each line you have with us. Your name is what you want it to be, so picking any name for any circumstance is your right, and we have to respect that and allow you to change your name under GDPR, even if only on that very specific part of our system – the contact name for a broadband service.

If you change your surname, even if it is to PSJKHGJGEXC, then that is your choice. And any One Touch Switching match request would fail unless using the surname PSJKHGJGEXC.

Obviously this is meant to be for your surname not really as a pseudo password, but, well, it is up to you.

Naturally, customers of AAISP who do this would probably need to adjust that field back to the correct surname if they did intend to switch, but this does seem like an interesting solution to the issue.