Ombudscom 2025: the hard numbers on Swiss telecom providers

What is Ombudscom?

The ombudscom Foundation is the official, independent conciliation body for the Swiss telecoms industry. It was created in 2008 under the Telecommunications Act (Art. 12c TCA) and is funded by provider fees, not by the state.

A provider must take part once a customer opens a case. That is a legal obligation. Ombudscom drafts settlement proposals and mediates between customers and providers.

When does a case reach Ombudscom?

• The customer has already contacted the provider in writing
• The dispute could not be settled
• The last contact was less than 12 months ago
• No court is dealing with the matter

In other words: an Ombudscom case is not an ordinary support ticket. It is an escalated dispute in which the provider's own customer service has failed.

Why does this count as a quality signal?

Trustpilot and Google are self-selected: angry customers leave a one-star review, satisfied ones usually stay silent. Ombudscom cases are different:

• Formal process: the customer has to open the case, justify it in writing and submit documents. Nobody does that out of boredom.
• The provider had its chance: a case only gets there if the provider could not or would not resolve it internally.
• Neutral third party: Ombudscom judges on the merits, not on emotion.
• A hard number: no star average, no review bombing. Simply: how often escalation became necessary.

Ombudscom cases therefore measure not satisfaction but failure to put things right. That is a far sharper signal.

Where we calculate a rate, and where we do not

Swisscom 160 cases, Sunrise 522, Salt 290, Digital Republic 0. Without context that is misleading: Swisscom has millions of customers, Digital Republic tens of thousands. A rate per 100,000 contracts fixes that, but only where a documented contract figure exists.

That is true for the three network operators and nowhere else: Art. 59 para. 2ter TCA allows OFCOM to publish market shares only, not customer numbers per company. For MVNOs and second brands those would be estimates, and a claim such as “4.6× better than the industry” built on an estimate is fake precision.

So per provider we show only the absolute figures from the official annual report. The industry average in 2025 is 8.7 cases per 100,000 contracts (1650 cases across 18.9 million contracts), against 4.9 in 2024.

All providers, 2025 against 2024

Providers with zero cases first, then by ascending case count.

This table deliberately shows only absolute case counts. A rate per provider requires a documented contract figure, and none exists outside the three network operators: Art. 59 para. 2ter TCA allows OFCOM to publish market shares only, not customer numbers per company. We do not use estimates to build rates. The conciliation body itself writes that little of qualitative value can be drawn from its statistics without relating them to contract numbers, and points to OFCOM for that. The next section establishes exactly that relation.

Cases per 100,000 contracts

Absolute numbers penalise large providers. Swisscom has more cases than Digital Republic, but also a hundred times more customers. The conciliation body itself writes that little of qualitative value can be drawn from its statistics without relating them to contract numbers.

We establish that relation, but only where it is documented. OFCOM publishes the market shares of the three network operators in its telecoms statistics. Customer numbers for second brands do not exist publicly, they are trade secrets. Conveniently, the conciliation body lists second brands under their network operator, exactly as OFCOM delimits the shares. Both sides match without us having to estimate anything.

The calculation runs against all contracts, not mobile subscriptions alone. The conciliation body covers every telecoms service, including fixed line and internet, and does not break its cases down by service type. Dividing such cases by mobile customers alone penalises every provider whose business rests on the fixed network. The denominator is therefore the sum of mobile, broadband and fixed line. As long as handyabo.com compared mobile plans only, a mobile denominator was the only reference available. Since the internet comparison we hold broadband and fixed-line figures anyway, and since 30 August 2026 we therefore calculate against all contracts.

Numerator: 2025 cases from the annual report. Denominator: ombudscom Jahresbericht 2025, Nenner BAKOM Fernmeldestatistik Stand 31.12.2024, that is 18.9 million mobile, broadband and fixed-line contracts, distributed by market share. The industry average in 2025 is 8.7 cases per 100,000 contracts, against 4.9 in 2024. Both years are calculated against the same denominator, so the change comes from the cases alone. OFCOM publishes the shares with a one-year lag. The “all others” row is a floor value: the denominator holds the entire collective position, the numerator only the providers we track.

Which brand contributes what?

The conciliation body lists second brands separately: yallo under Sunrise, Wingo under Swisscom, GoMo under Salt. How much of a group's caseload a brand contributes is therefore a hard number.

Whether a second brand sits above or below the industry average cannot be determined, and we do not estimate it. That would need its customer count, which nobody publishes: Art. 59 para. 2ter TCA allows OFCOM market shares only. Only the absolute figures appear here.

yallo's share stands out: 28.7 per cent of all cases in the Sunrise group fall on a single second brand. And the comparison shows it is not a Sunrise discount-brand phenomenon: at Swisscom the second brands account for 36.0 per cent of group cases, at Sunrise 37.9 per cent.

Important limitations

• Escalated cases only: most dissatisfied customers never reach Ombudscom. This is the tip of the iceberg.
• Premium-rate services counted apart: some cases concern third parties such as Paycon or Echovox rather than the mobile providers directly. Per provider we count only the telecoms-service cases.
• Zero cases is not perfection: no escalation does not mean “no complaints”. Statistically, small providers have fewer opportunities for disputes.
• Absolute numbers need context: Swisscom has more cases than Digital Republic, but also a hundred times more customers. We deliberately leave the judgement to you.

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