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Get Ready For One Touch Switch Now! London, the UK | 20 September 2022 Today, Common Wholesale Platform Ltd (CWP) is pleased to announce the successful completion of its first One Touch Switch transactions for its members. This accomplishment was made possible through the utilisation of the TOTSCo Pre-Production OTS Hub, which leverages the unique Common Switching Platform service. API connectivity tests and messaging tests were initially carried out between CWP and the TOTSCo simulator. This was followed by sample County Broadband and Glide Business end user residential customer match and switch requests, all successfully transacted via the TOTSCo Hub. CWP now feels confident that as a proposed TOTSCo Managed Access Provider it will be ready to commence industry trials from the planned date of 20th October, potentially involving more of its growing member base who are in various stages of OTS readiness. CWP are also actively seeking more members to collaborate in readiness testing. Lloyd Felton, CEO of County Broadband said: “County Broadband has been supportive of the CWP value adding platform since 2021 and looks forward to growing its full fibre customer base when OTS launches formally on 14 March 2024.” CWP with its unique switching portal, retailer to retailer ticketing, match data upload and web plugin features are helping the UK Telecom industry prepare itself for the big bang launch during Q1 2024. Richard Malazia, Sales Director at Glide Business said: “The extensive support that CWP have provided by responding swiftly to ongoing changes with the OTS standard has allowed Glide to remain focussed on its core business whilst easing us into the new OTS regulation.” CWP was created in 2021 as a not-for-profit member owned organisation with the primary purpose to facilitate wholesale and switching messaging services. This is to benefit of all UK residential and business network providers and retailers of broadband services. Its services are based on a proven global switching platform that already handles 1.6m transactions p.m. Marcel Horst, CEO at CWP said: “The UK 300+ residential and 4,000+ business retailers must get their systems, processes and support resources in place now to grab the OTS opportunity and comply with the regulation. We believe we have created something unique that will make it easier to embrace OTS within the fabric of a telecom retailer, but there really is very little time left before the OTS launch. We know this first hand, having launched OTS once already.” About Common Wholesale Platform Ltd: CWP (https://gray-gnat-625868.hostingersite.com) is a not-for-profit member owned telecom industry organisation created to increase gigabit connectivity choice. Its unique wholesale and switching services help many UK network providers and retailers grow their network utilisation and customer bases. About Mediafon Datapro:Partner of CWP, Mediafon Datapro (https://www.mediafondatapro.com), a leading software development company, boasts extensive global expertise in delivering nationwide centralised IT systems. Their innovative solutions have empowered industry players worldwide to achieve remarkable success. Partnering with Mediafon Datapro has proven instrumental in elevating their capabilities and delivering exceptional results for our clients. About County Broadband: County Broadband is a specialist rural broadband provider based in the East of England. County Broadband is extending its fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) Hyperfast broadband to 500,000 premises in select villages across the East of England. FTTP is the installation of fibre optic cables directly into premises and offers speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps (1 Gigabit). This is significantly faster than the more commonly used fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology in which fibre cables are sent to local street-side cabinets and then distributed through existing old copper cabling to each premise. For more information, visit www.countybroadband.co.uk or follow @CountyBroadband on Twitter. Broadband speed definitions. Broadband.co.uk defines the following services: High Speed = broadband up to 24Mbps Superfast = Broadband Up to 80Mbps Ultrafast = speeds of 100Mbps or more Hyperfast = speeds of 500Mbps or more Referenced here: https://www.broadband.co.uk/guides/ultrafast-and-hyperfastbroadband/. Please visit the following blog which explains the difference between Superfast and Hyperfast connectivity: https://countybroadband.co.uk/why-you-need-fullfibre/. About Glide Business: Glide (https://www.glide.co.uk) are a market-leading infrastructure and utilities business, delivering hyperfast connectivity across the UK and Europe. Our national full fibre network reaches over 100,000 premises, operating in difficult to serve areas while enabling devices, buildings and cities to become smarter. We provide fast and reliable broadband services, cabling expertise, smart technology, and data insight.

By Michelle Donegan | 18 November 2022 New wholesale platform providers step up to help fibre altnets offer wholesale services and support upcoming One-Touch Switch rules. Doubts persist over industry meeting Ofcom’s OTS deadline by April 2023. The altnet-owned Common Wholesale Platform (CWP) is up and running, and a commercial launch is expected “in the coming months”, as the deadline looms for operators to support regulator Ofcom’s One-Touch Switch (OTS) process. CWP announced that the platform is “fully operational”, and has “more than 200,000 full-fibre wholesale addresses available for retail members to resell”, during the Independent Networks Cooperative Association’s annual conference this week. According to Marcel Horst, Director of CWP, “it has taken 18 months to develop and test our platform, but we are now close to launching this across the UK telecom industry”. CWP is a member-owned and -operated not-for-profit organisation led by County Broadband, Glide Business, ITS Technology Group, NGE Contracting, and Wight Fibre that provides wholesale and OTS services. The platform is a central hub that makes fibre altnet products available and visible to internet service provider resellers. The organisation is understood to be working with at least twelve altnets and retail ISPs that are integrating their systems with the platform, testing the OTS process, and developing wholesale offers. Some altnets are also including participation in CWP in tenders for Project Gigabit contracts, which stipulate wholesale requirements. CWP is one of several new platforms to have cropped up in the busy UK fibre market in response to the growing trend for altnets to fill their full-fibre networks by offering wholesale services to other broadband retail service providers, as well as Ofcom’s new switching rules. For example, BroadbandHUB is creating an independent wholesale fibre aggregation platform that will be hosted on Google Cloud Platform, providing service availability, order management, and fault management for altnets and retail ISPs. Formed in April 2021, the company is jointly owned by UK-based Hubbub Group and Sweden’s Hubory. Another member-owned, not-for-profit platform is The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) that launched in June 2022. It does not appear to be as far along as CWP, as it is still in the process of conducting an RFP for the technology platform, but its membership has some heavyweight providers, albeit mostly retail. The “actual and pending” members listed on its website are Air Broadband, BT, CityFibre, Gamma Telecom, Sky UK, TalkTalk, Virgin Media O2, and Vodafone.   Ofcom launched the OTS process in September 2021 to make it easier and faster for consumers to change broadband providers, “in as little as a day where possible”. The new rules take effect from April 2023, and operators are required to implement the process by that time. However, as ISPreview reported earlier this month, this deadline looks unfeasible as there are unresolved technical issues and confusion among many altnets about the requirements. TOTSCo even says in its Frequently Asked Questions that it is “unlikely” that OTS will be ready by April next year because the Hub needs to be developed, providers will have to “modify their own processes”, and there will need to be “extensive end-to-end testing”. TOTSCo noted that it has flagged these issues with Ofcom. Resource: TelcoTitans.