Just in case you weren’t aware, the channel (and by extension, the entire UK) is in the middle of a massive connectivity evolution.
Gigabit-capable fibre connections are already replacing the ageing copper infrastructure to help us match our international counterparts and better compete on a global scale.
So, where are we in the timeline? What effects will this have on your billing? Keep on reading to find out…
Stop Sell areas are growing…
After the successful trials in Mildenhall and Salisbury, Openreach started deactivating PSTN exchanges in June 2021, prioritising high-volume urban areas.
Fast-forward to today and 251 exchanges have already stopped, with the last tranche of 69 withdrawn late April. And now that challenges in the transition have been ironed out, each tranche is larger than most of the previous – averaging about 80 exchanges per tranche, with the next scheduled for early August.
You can check which tranche that individual exchanges are in, as well their position in the timeline, here.
That means there are approximately 350 exchanges left in the pipeline, with the aim to move them all to ‘Stop Sell’ by early next year.
Pre-2025 benefits of Full Fibre
- Provide a potential £59bn boost to UK productivity
- Bring 1m people back into the workforce
- Free 500,000 people to live where they choose
What’s next?
Stop sell areas will continue to grow until September 2023, when Openreach plans to issue a full ‘stop sell’ for the entire country, meaning no one will be able to purchase new PSTN, WLR or ISDN lines.
Resellers will continue transitioning their customers onto fibre and Leased Line services.
In April 2025, any remaining PSTN lines with be classified as ‘orphaned’, with OR identifying these lines and working with its partners to ensure they’re transitioned before the end of the year.
Discover how ZOEY can future-proof your billing here
The impact on billing
Primarily, the biggest change to your day-to-day is the lack of reliance on your WLR ordering portal. Depending on your relationship with Openreach, this may be a prayer being answered, or if your services are sourced by a wholesaler, it may not affect your ordering and ticketing workflows at all.
Either way – there’s no point paying for functionality within your billing platform when it’s based on legacy requirements.
However, that doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges in managing the transition away from legacy products to fibre. If you’re happy with your platform, this represents a great opportunity to renegotiate your rates – but again, why invest in a solution that’s decades old and probably showing its age?
Also, consider that, especially when resellers have been operating for decades, historic orders can easily get lost or become hidden.
While Openreach will surface any remaining lines towards the end of the process, that could mean a last-minute rush to move forgotten lines. Therefore, we’d recommend running a deep audit to make sure all of your copper lines are identified and replaced as soon as possible.
And even if all your legacy lines are identified, and you have the time to cancel manually each of those lines, can you rest assured that all those same charges will be re-added accurately once they’ve been upgraded to a fibre-based connection?
Trust Tekton and ZOEY
ZOEY’s Bulk Update functionality and Margin Analysis suite, combined with our team’s dedicated support will help with all of these challenges:
- Disconnect services correctly and quickly
- Bulk-reconnect replacement solutions
- Reconcile supplier and end-user charges
All told, working with Tekton means having a reliable support network as you overcome the challenges of the 2025 Switch Off.
Whether large or small, we’ll make sure that all live lines are visible, you’re able to make broad account-wide changes in the blink of an eye and that you’re making the most of your margins to optimise profitability.
So, feel free to call our expert billing team on 0203 9723723 to understand more about how we can help you make the most of this amazing opportunity for transformation!
