How broadband providers can improve premises data ahead of TAR 2026
Ofcom’s Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR 2026) sets the regulatory approach for the UK’s fixed telecoms access market for April 2026 to March 2031. These reviews are evidence-led. Ofcom assesses where gigabit-capable networks are available, how competition is developing, and how services perform using measurable operational data.
This is especially relevant for altnets and infrastructure operators, who are growing fast and navigating complex builds. TAR 2026 will be based on evidence: network availability, service performance, and how well the market is functioning in different areas. That means the day-to-day data your systems generate such as installation outcomes, provisioning delays, support issues feed into the broader picture.
With that in mind, now is the time for telecoms providers to look at the operational metrics you manage day to day, especially how well your organisation manages premises data. When the same property is represented differently across systems (or between partners), it creates mismatches that slow down delivery.
Many of the most commonly tracked operational metrics in broadband delivery are affected by address accuracy and consistency. Metrics like time-to-install, order fallouts, right-first-time rates, and engineer revisits are all shaped by how well you identify and match premises across your systems.
When one property is recorded in different ways, such as a customer through your website, again by an engineer in the field, and again via a partner provisioning tool, it introduces confusion. Teams spend time working around the discrepancies, rather than moving the job forward. This slows delivery, increases support load, and reduces visibility in reporting.
Even when each individual system looks correct, mismatches appear when records move between systems or get updated at different points in the lifecycle. The most common patterns are:
Flats and Multiple residence building: The building is captured correctly, but the unit details vary (Flat 2 vs Apartment 2 vs 2/1), creating multiple records for the same premises.
New builds: One system has the address early, another gets it later, and teams create temporary records that never fully merge.
Named properties and rural formats: small differences in locality, dependent thoroughfare, or building name make matching unreliable.
Duplicates over time: a customer moves, upgrades, churns and returns, or signs up through a different channel leading to parallel records.
Field updates that stay local: engineers learn the details that make installs succeed (access, entry notes, exact unit location), but that information stays in tickets or job notes rather than improving the central record.
Partner handoffs: the same premises is represented differently between your systems and a partner’s (or contractor’s), which introduces avoidable fallouts during ordering and provisioning.
There is a need for one consistent format, one clear identifier, and one agreed source of truth. Getting there requires two things: first, ensuring existing records are clean, consistent, and complete. Second, putting in place controls to make sure new records are validated and matched from the start.
1) Address cleansing (existing records)
Address cleansing focuses on improving the records already in your CRM, provisioning tools, and reporting. This usually means standardising formatting, splitting free-text into consistent fields, correcting common variations, filling gaps where possiblem and deduplicating records so the same premises isn’t stored multiple ways. It gives you a cleaner baseline and reduces mismatches when data is shared between teams and systems.
2) Address validation (new and updated records)
Address validation prevents those issues from coming back. By validating at the point of capture, such as web forms, call centre journeys, internal tools, and partner feed. You can standardise addresses before they enter your systems, prompt for missing sub-premise details, and match records more reliably over time. It also creates a stronger foundation for linking a record to a stable property identifier. With our approach, UPRN is included, so you can keep a consistent reference for the property alongside the validated address.
The Telecoms Access Review 2026 will take a closer look at how networks are built, delivered, and maintained. Service performance will be a key focus and much of that performance is shaped by the quality of your underlying data.
Improving address and premises data might not be the most visible project, but it’s one of the most effective ways to reduce operational friction, improve installation outcomes, and support better reporting.