The Digital Britain Final Report called it the Network Design and Procurement Group and we've waited a while for it to be set up. But this week it arrived with a more media-friendly name.
Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) will drive forward the Universal Service Commitment to deliver 2Mbps to every household by 2012 and - if the proposal for a landline duty wins Parliamentary approval before the General Election - it will manage the spend of the £1billion Next Generation Fund to deliver next generation broadband to 90% of the country by 2017.
This week, the Panel was visited by the Chief Executive of Digital UK, David Scott, and the Chief Executive of the Help Scheme, Peter White, to advise us how the current state of progress in the digital switchover (DSO) of television.
National conversion to digital television has risen from 66% to 89% since 2005. Actual switchover has now occurred in four TV regions covering 4.8 million homes which is 18.2% of the UK. The main consumer issues so far have been retuning and regional overlaps of signals.
The Help Scheme delivered by Eaga - which is open to those over 75 or on certain allowances - was budgeted on the assumption of a take-up rate of 65%. In fact, so far, the scheme has only delivered around 275,000 installations so that currently actual take-up is averaging 18%. This suggests that overall people are finding switchover easier than was feared, but there are a small proportion of strugglers and a tiny proportion who - in spite of all the advance publicity and advice - only act once switchover actually happens.
The Panel asked detailed questions on the experience of the strugglers and on other issues like accessibility of equipment, but overall we are pleased that switchover is going so smoothly. Ever since the Panel was created six years ago, DSO has been a significant issue for us and we have been particularly active in promoting the development and delivery of the Help Scheme and the Digital Outreach programme, but it looks as if we can now adopt more of a simple monitoring role.
Ofcom has four territorial advisory bodies: one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The relevant country member from the Ofcom Content Board and the Communications Consumer Panel attend these quarterly meetings, so I go along to the Advisory Committee for England (ACE) in my capacity as the Panel Member for England. Today I was at Riverside House for the latest ACE meeting.
There was an excellent discussion on the future of radio which highlighted that we now need to see radio as a format (audio) rather than as a platform (your radio set) because 'radio' is now being listened to on a variety of platforms including the television set, the personal computer, the mobile phone and the MP3 player.
We discussed Ofcom's work on mobile coverage and the work of the regulator's International Team and we were advised on planned changes to the advertising code for television.
Also we were given up-dates on the Digital Economy Bill - which will complete its Committee Stage in the Lords on Tuesday - and how the forthcoming General Election will affect Ofcom. I reported on the forthcoming Work Plan of the Consumer Panel.
Finally a couple of ACE colleagues talked about their visit in personal capacities to the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas in early January. Apparently the buzz was all about tablet computers and 3D HD television.
All in all, a fascinating meeting.
A new year and the first of our monthly Panel meetings with a visit from the Chairman of Ofcom - Colette Bowe. We are always really pleased to have a chance to talk with senior staff at Ofcom, but no-one more so than Colette Bowe, particularly because of her past relationship with the Panel as my predecessor in the Chair. We had asked her to give us her sense of the policy climate and the challenges it might bring for Ofcom and the Panel over the next year. She was interested to hear what the Panel thought about illegal file sharing, given that Ofcom will take on responsibility for the Code of Conduct that will implement the legislation, if it goes on the Statute Book.
The Panel had made a submission to the Department of Business' consultation on the topic, which you can read HERE. We reiterated the concerns we had made in that document. In particular: that the process must be 'fair, reasonable and proportionate for consumers'; that there must be proper safeguards to protect consumers in relation to both the notifications process and whether any technical measures should be applied; and the need to recognize that the costs of the system will affect not just rights holders and ISPs but also consumers. Finally, since the proposed Code of Conduct will contain much of the detail of the system, we said we expect consumer interest bodies to be very much involved in discussions about that Code.
We also had a visit from the Department of Business to catch up on discussions about implementation of the 2 Mb/s universal service commitment. The Panel wanted to know what had been happening and when we might hope to see the promised procurement agency established. We pointed to the need to keep the consumer interest at the heart of the, now quite technical discussions. It will matter to consumers what 'universal' really means; who will get the USC and who won't. And it will matter what 2 Mb/s means; is it 'up to' 2 Mb, or something more meaningful for consumers, such as the ability to stream video content. We will be talking further with BIS about these issues.
We also talked to Ofcom about its Draft Annual Alan, which the Panel is very pleased to see included lots of the things we have been talking with Ofcom about during the last year, including work on switching for bundles and mobile coverage. but we had some other points which we wanted to raise which we will be submitting as a more formal response to the consultation.
Finally, we put the finishing touches to our own work plan which we will be publishing as a draft in the next month and inviting stakeholders to discuss with us - watch this space.
"The Panel believes that silent and abandoned calls continue to cause significant harm to consumers. For this reason, we believe that the penalty threshold should be increased and are calling for the maximum penalty for persistent misuse of an electronic communications network or service to be raised to £2 million. We support the maximum level of increase to ensure that Ofcom is able to penalise the greatest number of offenders in a manner proportionate to their size."
Extract from the Communications Consumer Panel submission to BIS on the Government consultation on raising the level of fines for silent calls.