For UK Communications Providers · GPLB Steering Group
CSF is the open, free, peer-to-peer transport for UK business switching. No central hub, no per-message fees, and your customer identity stays yours.
The common GPLB process and best practices, which many of us helped shape, are the shared standard worth protecting, whatever transport carries the messages. Transport is just the pipe: a data pipe that adds little beyond delivery, and it should never be a gatekeeper. So let’s keep the process common to all and give CPs a real choice of transport, because one solution does not fit all. CSF is one such choice: free and open source, and ready today to carry any payload the industry wishes to use, whether GPLB now, other protocols as we modernise, or CP-to-CP bilateral exchanges.
The Connected Services Framework is an open industry standard that lets Communications Providers exchange industry messages directly, MAP to MAP, over the standards it already runs: the JAM envelope, RCPID identifiers, TLS 1.3, OAuth 2.0 and DKIM signing. It carries Switching for Business today, and any payload the industry adopts next. No central intermediary meters, gates or charges the traffic, and CSF runs alongside TOTSCo, which participates as a Hub MAP, so adopting it is additive, not a rip-and-replace.
CSF carries the same GPLB process and best-practice messages unchanged, interoperable with existing OTS/SforB tooling. The standard stays shared; only the transport differs.
Open source for anyone to use, with zero per-transaction, routing or licensing fees between participants.
Your RCPID is yours for life and fully portable: move between MAPs, or run your own, by changing a DNS record you control.
Competing MAPs on equal terms, and any CP can even operate as its own “MAP-of-1.” One solution does not fit all.
A distributed, DNS-anchored network with no single point of failure; if one participant is down, the rest keep running.
Ready today to carry whatever the industry adopts: GPLB now, CP-to-CP bilateral exchanges, and future processes as we modernise.
Not every CP wants to stand up and run CSF or GPLB infrastructure. A Managed Access Provider (MAP) runs it for you, so you get every benefit of the network without the build. Because transport is a commodity, MAPs compete on the value they add above the pipe, so you can pick the one that fits you.
OAuth, Letterbox messaging, CP Registry and Directory, DKIM signing and DNS, all built, hosted and kept running to industry SLAs.
Sponsor onboarding, baseline testing and due diligence, so you reach production without the heavy lifting.
Monitoring, retries, outage handling and delivery guarantees, so messages simply arrive.
Connect to your BSS and CRM, agent contact tools, multi-brand support, and a help desk that knows switching.
Portals, directory and contact management, analytics and reporting: the services a good MAP adds on top of plain delivery.
Your RCPID stays portable, so you can change MAP or bring it in-house later. No lock-in.
Let’s protect the shared GPLB process and best practices, and give CPs a real choice of transport beneath it. CSF puts control back with CPs and their customers: free, open source, and ready today. Join the network and back it at the GPLB Steering Group, built by the industry, for the industry.
Read the full framework ↗“An open, free, peer-to-peer alternative that keeps switching cheap, resilient, and in the industry’s hands.”