What is GPLB?
Gaining Provider-Led Business switching (GPLB) is the UK process by which a business customer moves communications services from one provider to another. The gaining provider — the one winning the customer — leads the switch: it initiates the process, and the losing provider must respond within defined windows. It is set out in Ofcom's General Condition C7.
Why business switching is harder than residential
- Transactions stay open for months. A Switch Order Reference (SOR) can remain active for up to 180 days, so switching is long-running state management rather than a request-and-response integration.
- Estates mix switchable and non-switchable assets. Business sites combine broadband, hosted voice, leased lines, static IP addressing, alarm circuits and CCTV. Misclassifying one takes a customer's premises off the air.
- Migrations are phased. Dual running is normal: new services are provisioned while legacy ones are maintained, and both states must be held coherently.
- The audit trail is part of the product. Ofcom expects immutable transaction logs and dispute traceability, retrievable long after the switch completed.
What a compliant implementation needs
Transaction lifecycle management, timer and state transition handling, automated eligibility and validation, reliable asset classification, schema-validated message exchange, retry and exception handling, idempotency, and immutable logging that stands up as regulatory evidence.
How the messages move
Two transports carry GPLB messages in the UK: the TOTSCo Hub, the centralised industry platform, and the Connected Services Framework, an open peer-to-peer framework between Managed Access Providers. They are not mutually exclusive.
Using a Managed Access Provider
Rather than building all of this in-house, a Communications Provider can connect through a Managed Access Provider, which handles the message exchange, orchestration and compliance machinery on its behalf.
What is a Managed Access Provider? | Ofcom General Condition C7 | TOTSCo | Glossary
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