industry-driven One-touch switching company (TOTSCo) has entered into a strategic partnership with Indian company Tech Mahindra to design, build and operate a message exchange platform for the UK telecommunications industry. one touch switch (OTS) system for consumers to easily and quickly switch between ISPs.
For those who missed past news. Ofcom has now found that the UK’s broadband ISPs, particularly the four largest (BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Virgin Media), have missed several deadlines to introduce consumer-facing OTS migration systems. I’m very angry about it (here). Part of the problem stems from the fact that the industry took too long to launch his TOTSCo and develop the necessary platform to support it.
Note: TOTSCo is a not-for-profit, member-owned company set up by the UK telecommunications industry to provide the switching process for fixed broadband and voice services.
However, I’m not going to rehash all of that today. The big news is that TOTSCo has finally announced that the company that will design, build and operate the new message exchange platform (i.e. handle most of the communications) will be Tech Mahindra. /Process that supports switching between ISPs) for OTS – also known as. TOTSCo Hub.
The platform they have developed employs a cloud-native architecture for security and scalability and will be used by all UK retail communications service providers to enable new OTS processes for residential fixed broadband and voice services. Although business providers are not strictly required to use this hub, they are still required to provide a provider-driven process that benefits them, so they may adopt the same process to avoid duplication. It seems expensive.
Vikram Nair, President, EMEA Business, Tech Mahindra said:
“Ofcom has presented the telecom industry with a clear challenge to provide gainer-driven one-touch switching for residential customers. Through this strategic partnership, Tech Mahindra will be able to leverage TOTSCo Hub, an industry-wide messaging platform. to enable customers to seamlessly switch between communications providers.
The partnership leverages Tech Mahindra’s extensive communications expertise, particularly in handling end-to-end switching services, and state-of-the-art IT technologies and services to establish a messaging platform. ”
Paul Bradbury, CEO of TOTSCo, said:
“We are delighted to partner with Tech Mahindra to deliver a secure, robust and reliable platform that will play a central role in residential fixed broadband and voice switching in the UK. After extensive sourcing efforts, we chose to partner with Tech Mahindra and we are confident that together we can deliver the right solution to the industry at the right cost.”
Just to be clear, the TOTSCo hub has been in development and advanced testing behind the scenes for some time. So today’s news is all about confirming which company will ultimately be responsible for operating the hub once it’s completed. This is extremely important news, as until now there were still question marks over the final implementation.
What we need here is a final launch date for the OTS system, preferably a date with a solid chance of becoming a reality.