One Touch Switching has moved 3.5 million people in two years
One Touch Switching turns two this week, and the second year’s numbers are out. Data supplied to ISPreview puts the running total at 3,481,323 people who have changed broadband or home phone provider through the process since it went live on 12 September 2024. The first year accounted for 1.62 million of those. So year two was the busier one.
The process is what the industry calls gaining provider led, which in plain terms means the company you are moving to does the work. You contact them, they contact the provider you are leaving through a central hub run by an industry-funded body called TOTSCo, and the old service is cancelled as part of the same request. You should not be the one ringing round to cancel, or lining the two dates up so you are never left without a connection. That is the design, anyway.
It did not start smoothly. ISPreview is candid about that: the hub was in something of a beta state at launch, and a number of providers were not fully supporting it. Improvements followed, and Ofcom closed its related enforcement programme in June this year.
The failure still worth watching for
Volume is not the same as a clean run, and the complaint that keeps recurring in public is a specific one. The switch stalls partway, the old line is never actually cancelled, and the first sign of it is two bills instead of one. Threads on the Virgin Media and Sky community forums and on MoneySavingExpert describe exactly that, with people caught between two companies each pointing at the other. We have no way to say how common it is against three and a half million switches, and nobody publishes that split, so read it as a known failure mode rather than a widespread one.
Which gives you one thing to check. It is not the new connection going live, because you will notice that on your own. It is the old account closing. Give it a billing cycle and confirm the final bill from the provider you left arrived and actually ended, rather than a normal monthly one turning up again. If a switch goes wrong or runs late, our guide to compensation covers what you can ask for, and exit fees explains what a provider may still charge you on the way out.
One caveat on the headline figure. It comes from data supplied to ISPreview rather than a published report, so it is the industry’s own count of itself. If you are thinking about moving, how to switch to an altnet walks through what the process looks like from your side, and the availability checker shows what is actually built on your street before you start.