Openreach was created in 2006 following an agreement by the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and British Telecom (BT) to provide equal and fair access to the UK’s telephony network. Their WLR (including ISDN) telephone products, allowed Communication Providers (CPs) to offer their own telephone service without having to maintain the network themselves at a fair, regulated price. As technology has changed, and telephone services can now be provided over Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP, Openreach priorities have moved. Openreach are now focused on developing the fibre network and they will not provide the over the top VoIP lines that will be required to provide voice.

Moving forward, Openreach products will be a Single Order (SO) variant of ADSL or Fibre broadband services. These products will become known as; Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) which is Openreach’s Broadband only FTTC replacement. Single Order Transition Access Product (SOTAP), will be Openreach’s broadband only ADSL replacement, which be available in areas where fibre isn’t. These new broadband services require investment in equipment but can be purchased via communications providers such as Digital Wholesale Solutions. When these Single Order (SO) broadband products are provided there will be no voice on the telephone line and no dial tone, this means the CP will need to provide some form of VOIP service like a Hosted PBX License or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP Trunking) service to provide the voice telephony element which would replace the traditional WLR or ISDN