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David Edmonds, the Director-General of OFTEL, has stated that, in his view, consumer complaints against telecommunications operators should be taken away from OFTEL and handled by a Telecommunications Ombudsman. It was not said at the time that an EU directive (Article 26) is forcing OFTEL's hand but, in any case, we are in favour for two reasons:
Thinking about a Telecommunications Ombudsman brings up another question: what about regulating Internet Service Providers? At the moment the industry is unregulated - anyone can set up as an ISP - and it shows. There is an industry representative body, ISPA, but membership is voluntary and its only recourse, if a member ISP does not co-operate with it, is to threaten. Clearly much possible regulation of ISPs, such as defining minimum quality of service, is futile because, in the end, the telephone modem is not a reliable technology. However, we suggest minimum standards for how an ISP deals with its subscribers along the lines of the CAT standard in financial services or the Which? Web Trader scheme in e-commerce. For example:
Exactly the same rule would apply for Internet Service Provision as for mortgages or pensions; you sign up with an ISP not pledged to the minimum standards at your risk. The role of the Telecommunications Ombudsman would be to rule on complaints against ISPs taking part in the scheme: this would, finally, put ISPs under fairly light regulation. After all, the standards we suggest are common sense, but lack of common sense never stopped anyone doing anything. Defining quality of service for broadband access is a different matter as the service is 'always on' and expected to be robust. Once we have experienced such services for ourselves we will revisit the regulation of broadband ISPs.
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