Discussion at the Panel’s May meeting was focused on the key issues of the moment, including spectrum, mobile coverage and illegal file-sharing. Ofcom presented their future spectrum policy and reported on the early finding of their research into mobile coverage. Panel members advised Ofcom to be explicit how their approach to spectrum policy will deliver benefits for consumers and citizens, and supported the development of a framework for analysing consumer and citizen interests. Discussion on mobile coverage looked at the lack of reliable coverage information, and how this puts consumers at a disadvantage. The Panel asked Ofcom to explore coverage solutions as soon as possible and press ahead with gathering, and where possible publishing, accurate operator coverage information. The Panel also discussed the principles that it has developed to guide Ofcom when it draws up the Code of Practice on online copyright infringement (or illegal file sharing) in order to protect consumers.
You can download the minutes of the Panel meetings from our website:
http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/angenda-and-minutes/2010
Last week I attended a meeting called by Jim Mather, the Scottish Parliament's Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism. It was described as a stakeholder meeting on Digital Britain and attended by business groups (IOD, Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Scottish Council Development and Industry), Economic Development Agencies (Scottish Enterprise, Highlands & Islands Enterprise), Local Authorities (COSLA), Consumer Bodies (CFS and CCP) and others. The Scottish Government sees this group as a Steering Group to help influence the Westminster Government, articulate the Scottish position to Digital Britain UK, and to help build a consensus of interest around the issues to be tackled. The group is keen to see a Digital Strategy for Scotland as a starting point for this. There was a useful discussion around the group's priorities for Digital Britain, on the universal broadband commitment and next-generation broadband. The civil servants will draft an initial position paper that is to be circulated for further discussion. The Communications Consumer Panel will continue to engage with this initiative and encourage the Scottish Government to examine the important issues raised in Digital Britain through the eyes of Scottish consumers and small businesses.
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.
Last week's annual Oxford Media Convention was obviously the last before the General Election and keynote speakers were members of both the Labour Government and the Conservative Opposition.
Stephen Timms put the case for "government activism" in the face of the global economic crisis and the changing communications scene. He underlined the Government's commitment to the introduction of a universal broadband commitment for the 10% of homes which cannot currently receive a minimum broadband speed of 2 Mbit/s and to the next generation levy (or landline duty) which will promote next generation broadband to the 'final third' of the country unlikely to receive it through market forces.
You can read his full speech here.
Jeremy Hunt welcomed the production of a Digital Economy Bill but expressed opposition to more tax or more regulation. He was concerned at the extra powers which the Bill would give to Ofcom and suggested that the regulator already did more than it should. For him, the "phone tax" was "misconceived" and he feared that, if implemented, it would lead to disconnections from fixed lines. Instead he argued that BT should be required to open up its ducts to competing operators.
He spoke without any notes (and without use of a rostrum) but you can read the official text of the speech here.
Several members of the Communications Consumer Panel were present at the Oxford Media Convention and the Chair Anna Bradley spoke at one of the seminars.
Vintage rockstars seem to be wheeled out with increasing regularity to raise awareness and lobby on communications policy these days, particularly where intellectual property is discussed: Westminster wonks have become used to rubbing shoulders with Undertones lead singer Feargal Sharkey - who famously jammed with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham last year. Billy Bragg is a less familiar figure on the policy circuit. But as Parliament gets to grips with the Digital Economy Bill, he was the headline act at a gathering of media stakeholders gathered at the Westminster Forum to discuss The Future of Content Online: micropayments, digital delivery, and disintermediation. Bragg, who represents the loosely organised lobby group: the Featured Artists Coalition, set out his concerns that the proposed measures in the Digital Economy Bill would have the impact of alienating consumers, whilst doing little to stop piracy. Open about his self interest - he said that the typical 8% of sales deals that artists get should be replaced with 50% deals now that music is delivered online - Bragg also argued that criminalising consumers would backfire on an industry that faces stiff competition from games, DVDs and other forms of entertainment. At a time when the content industry generally is tantalisingly close to sealing a deal with Government to protect IP with the help of ISPs, Bragg and the FAC find themselves in an interesting but potentially uncomfortable position. They have broken ranks with their traditional representatives at the record companies, and ‘rights holders' who have been lobbying Government for tighter IP protection, no longer speak with one voice. Bragg's position was opposed by Richard Mollet, director of public affairs at the BPI, who set out the detail of the decline in sales of physical music products and the alleged impact on sales of the rise of illicit file sharing. He argued that intermediaries such as the record companies he represents remain a key sector in the UK's creative economy and that the Government is right to protect their model. The other speakers, from Universal Studios, Google, the Digital Rights Group and several lawyers and consultants described a picture where the role of intermediaries - such as record companies, broadcasters and publishers is getting more, rather than less confused. The range of services they offer: from promotion, to packaging and distribution, to protection of IP and collection of revenue is itself being disaggregated and there is intense competition among new models of packaging, promotion and distribution - and experimentation by artists who want to establish direct links with consumers on the internet. At a time of such intense experimentation there was real doubt expressed about whether government should be involved in protecting any one business model. What became clear however, is that this debate is very much a squabble between interested parties such as artists, ISPs and intermediaries. The voices of consumers are barely heard. One constructive suggestions on the way forward came from Steven Morrison of All 3 Media who gave a presentation on how to protect UK content in the new environment. His suggestions: to get pay tv platforms to pay to distribute PSB channels, and impose a levy on digital recorders are certainly worth looking at, but do not feature prominently in the current round of government proposals. It is difficult for wonks of a certain generation - including myself - not to be seduced by guitar stars of a certain era - but I couldn't help being left with the impression that the really rocking gig was elsewhere: in Parliament with the discussion of the Digital Economy Bill. And with the file swappers in homes, playgrounds, colleges and pubs, up and down the country. Many of them have probably never heard Billy Bragg sing, and whilst they do still get their Teenage Kicks from music and films - many of them are quite used to doing so without paying intermediaries or artists.
A leaked Government document covered in a piece in the "Times" gives some more detail about the proposed levy to raise a fund to contribute to the roll-out of next generation broadband to the so-called final third of the country.
According to this document, the levy will apply to each line (and not just one line per household) and to fibre connections as well as copper ones. Also it will be subject to VAT so it will not be 50p per line per month but 59p.
Although the Conservatives and TalkTalk have opposed the levy, others - such as the Broadband Stakeholder Group and the Communications Consumer Panel - have seen the need for a next generation fund. In her remarks to a Westminster eForum this week, Panel Chair Anna Bradley said:
".. the UK's broadband infrastructure will need to meet consumers' future needs. To this end the Panel supports the ‘Final Third' Fund as a way of stimulating the deployment of NGA where the business case for commercial rollout does not stack up. We should not wait until some indeterminate point in the future to find out the precise limits of market-led NGA rollout. The maximum benefits to the economy and to society will come from public investment in NGA now. And this investment will cost less if it happens alongside commercial rollout."
At the November meeting the panel reviewed our work on digital participation. We have been developing a digital participation framework to help guide the work that is going on by Ofcom in digital participation and digital inclusion (race online 2012) and ensure it is focussed on those areas in which consumers have the greatest need. We are really pleased to see that others are already referring to the framework as they develop their priorities. The framework is research-based and is supported by a literature review which draws together consumer research on digital inclusion. We agreed to further develop this review with a look at the academic literature on the issues and to do some in-depth research with consumers to understand more about their journeys toward digital inclusion. We hope to complete this work by the end of the financial year.
We also began the process of building our workplan for next year. We took a regular six monthly review of work on consumer policy and enforcement. We asked for these six monthly overview reports so we can keep our eyes on the entirety of the programme and identify the specifics that we want to know more about. On this occasion we asked to have some more information about work that it is proposed on rollover contracts. Alongside this report we also had a six monthly update from payphone plus. We also had two papers from Ofcom on European issues; one covering the digital agenda and a second the general consumer protection agenda. Finally we took a paper on some potential future issues relating to public expectations of the internet and had a technology demonstration which helped to bring us up to speed on some imminent market developments.
We gave some advice to Ofcom on all of these issues, but we also considered our own draft workplan on the back of our discussions. The result was a much longer list of possible issues for next year than we have resource to address. Now we begin the task of prioritising our own work according to the criteria we have established which are: What is the scale of the issue? and Can the Panel make a difference? The workplan will be out for wider consultation in February 2010.
Finally, we agreed a process for appraising the performance of the Panel as a whole, and for each of the members. We want to ensure that we keep ourselves on our toes by reflecting on what we have done, but at the same time we are anxious not to introduce a heavy weight of bureaucracy which will detract from our ability to deliver advice. The result is a process which is much more arduous at the time at which members might come up for re-appointment and includes third party feedback, with a lighter touch approach in other years. Having said this we would encourage anyone who wants to feedback on the Panel's performance to do so whenever they have something to say, in whatever way seems most appropriate; it can only help us to improve what we do and the way we do it.
At this month's Panel meeting we discussed reports from each of our national members. I had asked them to tell us something about three things: the political context and issues for consumers in their nation and the way they fulfilled their role as a national Consumer Panel member. This was part of trying to ensure that the Panel are properly able to represent the interests of consumers and citizens in all four nations.
Perhaps the single most important thing to come out of this discussion was just how important rural, low income and small business issues to each of the three devolved nations. Intuitively we knew this already, but the reports made it much plainer. This is not to say that these issues are less important for parts of England, but they are generally significant for the devolved nations. This suggests that learning from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland could help to give real substance to the Panel's responsibility for representing the interests of people on low incomes, in rural environments and running small businesses. We will be talking about how to make this a reality, but I hope it will result in our mainstreaming the work of the national Panel members.
We also had a presentation from a member of Martha Lane-Fox's digital inclusion team about today's launch of the race online to 2012 http://raceonline2012.org/. The Panel has been a strong supporter of the idea of a Digital Champion and has a long interest in digital inclusion. I am a member of the Task Force that was set up to advise Martha in her work as digital inclusion champion, but this is in a personal capacity and it is important for the Panel to make their own contribution to this work.
We also discussed a number of issues with Ofcom including: access and inclusion, digital participation, the review of universal service and some work to clear spectrum for newer services such as mobile broadband which will have the consequence that some consumers will need to retune their televisions after digital switchover.
Anna
This week I went to Bournemouth to view a show house which demonstrates the capability of one of the largest FTTH schemes outside the national roll-out schemes of BT and Virgin Media. The scheme is branded Fibrecity and it is being constructed by H2O Networks which is a British, privately-owned company. The name of the company is the clue to its business model: it lays optical fibre in the sewers - in Bournemouth's case, those of Wessex Water - and then the cable comes out of a manhole and micro-trenches (20mm wide by 60-150 mm) take the cable to residential homes.
In Bournemouth, H2O started pulling in cable in the summer and by early 2011 expects to have passed 85,000 homes. So far, some 200 homes have been passed, of which 84% have agreed to the free installation of an A5-sized box being fitted to the outside of the house. H2O's business model means that it sees itself as a utility and expects to achieved a return on its investment over 15-20 years.
H2O will not itself provide any services. Instead it will run an open access network and, on appropriate commercial terms, any service provider than wishes to do so can use the network to serve customers. Any customer signing up to a service provider - none are operating yet - will visit the customer's premises to install the internal wiring that will be necessary to receive the service.
What services in what bundles at what prices are offered to consumers depends, of course, on the service providers, but the wholesale offering by H2O to those providers is 100 Mbit/s downstream and upstream. In the show house, I saw several televisions showing HD channels plus a Wii being used as an online console plus an X-box operating online plus IPTV on a PC plus several radio station plus an IP phone all operating simultaneously and the network coped smoothly with it all. Of course, no home will want or need this sort of bandwidth for years, but the network has a considerable degree of future-proofing and it will be for the competing service providers to parcel out the bandwidth as consumers find the need and are prepared to pay for it.
Bournemouth will be the first of a number of such Fibrecities. The next in line is Dundee. Construction there has not yet started but is expected to be completed in late 2011. Some 73,000 premises will be passed. Other Fibrecities are expected to be announced by H2O soon. The company's aim is to have half a million homes connected to its local networks by 2012.
The FCC has pronounced on Net Neutrality - the principle that ISPs should not mess with the traffic they carry - before. But in a speech last week the new Chairman seemed to be edging closer, much closer to supporting the principle.
This month the Panel devoted a good chunk of our meeting time to developing, what we have been calling a framework for digital participation. We want this framework to provide an overview of what different groups of consumers need to get online and make the most of being online - everything from the motivation to take a look, through accessible products and services, to the skills to create content and participate in e-exchanges. (You can find an early version here, but it has already changed a lot). We want this framework to start from the consumer perspective, which is why we have rooted it in research; in particular, the deliberative research we did on the future of communications (http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/No%20one%20should%20miss%20out_digital%20future%20research%20report.pdf)) and the work Ofcom has done amongst those not yet on the internet (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/bbresearch/bbathome.pdf), have influenced the shape of the framework.
We hope this framework will be used by everyone who will be involved in supporting consumers and citizens in getting online and deepening their digital engagement. We think using the framework will help to ensure that the work that is done meets consumer and citizen needs and priorities - so we have less of what policy makers and industry want to tell us, and more about what we want to know and learn. We are already discussing the framework with the people we hope will use it and once it is complete we will publish it and use it to inform what the Panel says about all the digital participation and inclusion work that is going on.
The Panel also had discussions with Ofcom teams about the complaints and ADR review and the Mobile Sector Assessment. We had just received the results of our own mobile coverage research among consumers and were able to share early thoughts on this with Ofcom. The research confirms the importance of network coverage issues for consumers and small businesses. It will be published in the next couple of weeks, so watch this space.
We also reviewed our work on superfast broadband (NGA) and agreed an update of the paper we published on local NGA schemes. Finally, we did a quick stock take of the work going on under the Digital Britain banner, especially in relation to the legislation that will affect Ofcom's future duties, bearing in mind that any change in Ofcom's responsibilities raises issues about the role of the Panel.
Anna
Tomorrow <a href="http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/default.aspx">PhonepayPlus</a> - the body that regulates phone-paid services in the UK - takes on regulation from Ofcom of the 087 number range (0871, 2 and 3, but not 0870). 087 numbers are used by thousands of consumers every day for a wide range of services, including ticket bookings, travel advice and technical helplines.
The issues of most concern to consumers are price transparency and waiting times. Therefore providers of 087 services must publish clear and accurate pricing information alongside the 087 number wherever it appears and must have arrangements in place to manage any delays that may impact on the consumer.
The Communications Consumer Panel was recently visited by PhonepayPlus Chief Executive Paul Whiteing and works closely with the organisation on consumer issues of mutual interest.
Mis-selling in the fixed-line market - where consumers are switched without their consent or an attempt is made to do this - is a long-standing problem and indeed the first submission to Ofcom by the Consumer Panel was on this subject. A series of efforts have been made to reduce the problem and the Panel has welcomed the latest measures proposed in a recent Ofcom consultation document.
However, the nature of the problem has changed as the competitive market has developed. The Panel is particularly concerned now that mis-selling of services and the ability to switch services take on a different dimension when different services - such as fixed line, mobile, broadband and television - are bundled together into a package. Over four in ten households already take bundled packages and a third of these take the triple-play option of fixed, broadband and TV.
Therefore the Chair of the Communications Consumer Panel Anna Bradley has written to the Ofcom Director of Consumer Affairs Claudio Pollack to call for thinking about a single process for switching communications services:
"In parallel with strengthening and enforcing the rules on fixed line mis-selling, we believe that Ofcom should be working towards a single process to enable consumers who buy bundles of services to switch provider quickly and easily. We would like to see Ofcom develop a strategy to move to a single switching process for all communications services as soon as possible.
This should involve a detailed examination of the possible options, including a process that requires a consumer to contact the new provider only, a process that requires a consumer to contact the existing provider initially and a process overseen by an independent third party. The Panel recognises that this is not a straightforward issue and that each option has pros and cons."
You can read the full letter here.
Over the last few months, the Community Broadband Network (NGA) has organised a series of six regional events sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent and designed to examine how local communities can develop schemes to provide next generation access (NGA). The events have been held in Gateshead, Nottingham, Bristol, Birmingham, Basingstoke and Manchester.
On behalf of the Communications Consumer Panel, I have spoken at four of these events, outlining a study we have carried out tracking the 40 or so local initiatives on next generation broadband. The Manchester conference - the last in the current series - was held last week and was the most up-beat of the enthusiastic events.
The main reason for the excitement was the recent publication of the Digital Britain Final Report. As one speaker put it: "Digital Britain has changed the landscape". He said of the NGA debate: "It's leapt forward a long way".
Lord Carter - who produced the report - was not able to be present but recorded a video speech for the conference. His report recommended that investment in NGA in the 'final third' of the country be encouraged by the levying of 50 a month on all users of fixed lines and this is a proposal which has been supported in a statement by the CBN.
The Digital Britain Final Report gives encouragement to local NGA schemes but rightly calls for common technical standards and inter-operability. For this purpose, an initial £150,000 has been made available for a new organisation called the <a href="http://www.inca.coop">Independent Networks Cooperative Association</a> (INCA) and INCA was officially launched at the Manchester conference.
As always a lively and wide ranging set of discussions at the Panel. Some areas of wider interest include:
Mobile coverage: Over the past six months the Panel has got increasingly interested in problems with mobile coverage, so we commissioned a piece from the advisory team on what we might do to raise this issue up the agenda. The problem is that while the coverage statistics say that almost the whole of the country is covered, consumer and small business experience says otherwise. Technical details about the way the data is collected and reported can explain this difference, but the existing data gives a misleadingly good picture and the fact is that we don't really know how big a problem coverage is.
There are two kinds of issues for consumers and small businesses: some people are unable to get network coverage in their home or office and even more people are unable to get reliable coverage when using their phone when traveling. The Panel agreed that the next step for us is to find out more about the consumer experience of mobile coverage so we can establish how much of a problem it is for people and so how much importance we should attach to raising the profile of the problem.
ADR and complaints handling: We had a very interesting discussion with the Ofcom team working on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and complaints handling. We have always been supportive of proposals to reduce the time companies have to resolve complaints before consumers can go to ADR (from 12 to 8 weeks). But ADR remains a last resort, so getting complaints handling right inside service providers is a big prize that the Panel are interested in talking more about.
Colette Bowe: Colette came to her first Panel meeting as Chairman of Ofcom. We had a good discussion about the things on her personal agenda. These were highlighted in the Select Committee hearing, prior top her appointment: broadband, disability and digital switchover. These are, of course, all issues the panel are also concerned with. We also talked about some of the things that have been on the Panel's mind over the last few months and that we have been discussing with Ofcom staff. Colette will return to the Panel in six months or so and in the meantime, she and I will meet for a catch up every six weeks or so. These opportunities to speak direct to the Chairman of Ofcom have been a feature of the Panel from the very beginning and are a very important part of the special working relationship that we have with the regulator.
Anna
This is the first of a regular series of blogs designed to keep you in touch with the discussions in Panel meetings. The minutes are published in full as soon as possible after the meeting (they can be found here: http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/agenda-and-minutes/2008,),. In the blog we will try to give you the edited highlights as close to the meeting as possible. Here are the edited highlights of our May meeting
The Communications Consumer Panel published its 2009/10 Work Plan today. We consulted widely on the draft plan, but would welcome any comments and suggestions on the topics that we intend to cover or indeed any that people might feel ought to have been in the plan.
In drawing it up we were guided by the consumer and citizen research into attitudes to broadband that we published earlier in the year. This said very clearly that broadband had moved from being a ‘nice to have' and was now something on which ‘no one should miss out'. We will therefore be devoting a significant part of our efforts to ensure that the consumer and citizen voice is heard clearly in the discussions about the implementation of the Digital Britain and Digital Inclusion Plans.
We support the concept of a Universal Service Commitment to ensure that all homes have the ability to access decent speed broadband and will be working to ensure that this is implemented in a way which meets the needs of consumers and citizens.
Consumer willingness to use broadband services is affected by their concerns about the security and potential misuse of their personal data. We will continue to highlight this issue and seek reassurance for users.
The consumer agenda in communications is very wide. We will continue to monitor, comment on and take action where we have a concern, across a wide range of issues. These will include mobile, consumer protection, next generation broadband access, digital TV switchover and monitoring the operation of the code on broadband speeds, which the Panel were instrumental in pursuing last year.
We would welcome any comments or suggestions.
There is growing interest around Europe in the experience of the Communications Consumer Panel here in the UK. The Panel Manager Alistair Bridge recently spoke about the Panel at a training event run by the Hungarian telecommunications regulator. Last week I was invited over to Lisbon to speak about our work to ANACOM, the Portguese regulator for telecommunications and posts.
The event was chaired by ANACOM's Chairman Professor Jose Amado da Silva and attended by ANACOM staff and stakeholders. I took the best part of an hour to deliver my presentation, but then I was posed a series of very thoughtful questions for another hour. There was considerable interest in the impact of functional separation in the UK and the processes for handling consumer complaints in this country.
ANACOM is itself responsible for investigating consumer complaints. It receives some 3,000-4,000 a month and is becoming overwhelmed by them. It would like to be able to publish complaint data so that consumers are better informed, but the providers are fiercely resistant to this, arguing that the data would not be sufficiently robust and directly comparable. Of course, Ofcom has the same problem on publication of data from the Ofcom Advisory Team (OAT) in the face of Panel suggestions that the data would better empower consumers.
On the Panel, I take a special interest in next generation access or super-fast broadband. In Portgugal, they have no interest in fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) because the quality of the local copper line is poor. So all of Portugal's NGA is fibre to the home (FTTH). In the UK, the number of FTTH connections is still merely in double figures but I was advised that, in Portugal ( a nation of about 10M), it is already around 250,000.
My presentation can be found here: http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/news-and-media/speeches-and-presentations
The Panel submitted its response to the interim Digital Britain report last week, along with numerous other organisations. The response focussed on a few issues we think are of particular importance: the proposed universal service commitment; next-generation broadband access; media literacy; digital television; and digital rights and distribution. You can find the detail here: http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/digital-inclusion/digital-britain. The first three are issues we will be following particularly closely during the year as part of our new work plan: http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/about-us/panel-work-programme. We have great hopes for the final report from Digital Britain, but we are conscious this will mark just the beginning of what we hope will be significant developments.
Perhaps even more important than any of the specifics though, is the ambition that consumers and citizens should be central to the creation of Digital Britain. We noted at the outset that there was no one on the Digital Britain Steering Group with specific expertise in understanding and speaking up for the interests of consumers and citizens, and suggested the Government should redress this in some way. We have subsequently heard concern about this omission from others too.
We understand that the Government is working to a tight timetable and that a fast pace is a useful way of focusing minds on resolving key issues, such as 2G liberalisation and the future of Channel 4. But at the same time, the Panel believes that it would be helpful for the Government to take some steps to show how they are taking consumer and citizen interests into account.
One thing that could help give reassurance to interested stakeholders would be to make the process more transparent by setting out clearly, in relation to each policy area, the evidence and analysis that relate to the options under consideration. The Panel would particularly like the Government to present its analysis of how particular policy options would affect the interests of consumers and citizens, including sub-groups such as older people, people in rural areas, disadvantaged people, people with disabilities, people with low incomes and small businesses. The Panel's consumer interest toolkit could be a helpful guide.
Providing this degree of transparency would reduce the risk of unintended consequences and make the successful implementation of the Government’s decisions more likely. It would also give other groups representing consumers and citizens some reassurance that their concerns about lack of representation are undfounded.
Yesterday afternoon the Panel held an open meeting to discuss our draft work plan for 2009/10. This was a first for the Panel and the attendance suggested there was a real appetite to hear more about us and our plans. We invited a wide range of interested organisations, including consumer bodies, Citizen bodies, communications companies and regulators and policy makers. More than 30 organisations attended and I am very grateful for the time they gave us.
We had two questions for the meeting:
We got some great feedback, mostly positive, but with ideas for refinements and suggestions about how we might take the work forward. We hope that opening a discussion up about our work in this way will make it easier for people to work with us.
If you weren't invited and would have liked to be - please let me know by e-mailing us sofia.sturesson@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk. We will make sure that you are invited to other, similar events. And if you would like to have your say, it is not too late. The presentation I gave at the event can be found by clicking here http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/smartweb/about-us/panel-work-programme and you can send your thoughts by adding a comment to this blog or e-mailing alistair.bridge@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk. Comments will be most useful to us if we have them by the 17th March, please.
Anna
The new economy-wide consumer body Consumer Focus has today published its first major report. It's called "Rating Regulators" and assesses six regulators in term of how effectively they incorporate the consumer interest in their deliberations. The six regulators examined are Ofcom, Postcomm, Ofwat, Ofgem, the Financial Services Authority and the Food Standards Agency.
Ofcom comes out of the report very well and indeed the regulator has issued a media release today highlighting that. The Communications Consumer Panel agrees with Consumer Focus that, over its five years of operation, Ofcom has become demonstrably more consumer-focused and we welcome the wider recognition of this.
We would like to feel that we ourselves have played a positive role in this process, acting as a "critical friend" to Ofcom and proposing its use of the Consumer Interest Toolkit which we developed.
Four of us on the Communications Consumer Panel are appointed specifically to represent the individual nations of the UK. I am the member for England and I have colleagues representing Scotland (Fiona Ballantyne), Wales (Kim Brook) and Northern Ireland (Maureen Edmondson).
Each of us sits on the appropriate national Ofcom Advisory Committee so I sit on the Advisory Committee for England which has the wonderful acronym ACE.
Now ACE has not met for over half a year because new members have been being recruited and in fact the new Committee only has one member (Anne Scorer) from the original membership. Ironically the new Committee for England is chaired by an American (Professor Bill Dutton) and its members include a South African and two Scots.
However, each of course resides in England and represents a particular English Region. Between them, they have considerable expertise and knowledge, as was evident at the first meeting of the new Committee held this week in Riverside House.
The agenda for this first meeting was formidable, since it was intended to brief the new members on most of the main issues currently being tackled by Ofcom, so we were advised on Governance, the Consumer Panel, the Content Board, Broadband Speeds, the Ofcom Annual Plan, Access & Inclusion, Digital Britain, Public Service Broadcasting, Radio, Media Literacy, Mobile, Spectrum and Next Generation Access.
After six and a half hours, the Committee members must have been exhausted, but they acquitted themselves admirably and I'm really looking forward to working with them to ensure that the interests of consumers in England - actually 84% of the UK - are well represented.
Welcome to the first Communications Consumer Panel blog. Each of the ten members of the Panel will be blogging here from time to time; talking about the things the Panel is doing and the activities each of us is involved with in our work to further the interests of consumers and citizens in communications. You can find all the formal business of the Panel's work recorded on this web site, and all our publications and research are also made available here. But if you want to know who we have been talking to, where we have been speaking, and what we have been saying - the blog is the place for you.
Some examples of the things we might have blogged about in the past are:
Some examples of things we will be blogging about soon are:
You can keep up-to-date with the blog and our work by signing up to the RSS feed on this page. Please give us your feedback on the content or the substance of the blog, so we can develop it over the coming months. We look forward to hearing from you.
Anna