This blog believes that OFCOM should have been, as the Tories originally proposed, burnt in the bonfire of the quangos. Let me explain why:
1) I buy broadband from Sky advertised as 8Mbps, but which regularly delivers under 10Kbps in a rural area of Wales. Thta's a thousand times less than promised. imagine walking into a shop and buying a bag of sugar and being given a grain instead. This quango has institutionalised this and enabled it to happen with no ction whatsoever. Broad brush unbunduling is a blunt tool for real people, but a great foil for quangoites earning more than the PM.Cynical price gouging is going on in the UK broadband market and OFCOM sould be doing what the independent website Samknows does and taking to task any over-contended service and penalising them. Broadband should be treated like water - if the pressure is too low, the provider is fined heavily.
2) In France I have TV, broadband and all calls for around €30 a month. In the London Virgin charges me £80 (plus £25 for Sky Sports) for the same service. In Wales, the cost with Sky is about the same. There seems something wrong (my energy charges in France are under half of those in the UK, by the way).
3) OFCOM is complicit in the fact that a mobile data costs under £1 a week in the UK, but £1 a minute in Europe. What EU ? What single market ? This is not only an OFCOM issue, but to take the same phoen, on the same serice provider (Orange) from the UK to France and then be charged a hundred times more is just theft, pure and simple.
4) It has made a mess of the bidding for the local TV channels. Giving the Scottish licences to the only Scottish commercial broadcaster is hardly a measure of plurality.
I could go on. This is an organisation that is totally out of control and lost up its own backside. It commissions and writes report and lets down the British people. It is a disgrace of the highest order and the fact that Dave & Co hasn't followed through on its promise for total reform shows what a spineless bunch of wet rich boys we have running our country.
The idea that OFCOM be given the brief for print regulation after Leveson is terrifying and shows how dumb that guy is.
OFCOM exists to serve a small band of London based civil servants and quangoites who daily pat themselves on the back and ignore the sheer deprivation they create in rural Britain, let alone the price gouging they allow and enable in their industry. It also now serves to support government policy since the government realised how disfunctional it is over these issues. Why does a Briton, on average, spend five times more on television than an American ? And three times more on broadband and telephones than a Frenchman ? Only OFCOM can answer that. And how likely is that ?
1) I buy broadband from Sky advertised as 8Mbps, but which regularly delivers under 10Kbps in a rural area of Wales. Thta's a thousand times less than promised. imagine walking into a shop and buying a bag of sugar and being given a grain instead. This quango has institutionalised this and enabled it to happen with no ction whatsoever. Broad brush unbunduling is a blunt tool for real people, but a great foil for quangoites earning more than the PM.Cynical price gouging is going on in the UK broadband market and OFCOM sould be doing what the independent website Samknows does and taking to task any over-contended service and penalising them. Broadband should be treated like water - if the pressure is too low, the provider is fined heavily.
2) In France I have TV, broadband and all calls for around €30 a month. In the London Virgin charges me £80 (plus £25 for Sky Sports) for the same service. In Wales, the cost with Sky is about the same. There seems something wrong (my energy charges in France are under half of those in the UK, by the way).
3) OFCOM is complicit in the fact that a mobile data costs under £1 a week in the UK, but £1 a minute in Europe. What EU ? What single market ? This is not only an OFCOM issue, but to take the same phoen, on the same serice provider (Orange) from the UK to France and then be charged a hundred times more is just theft, pure and simple.
4) It has made a mess of the bidding for the local TV channels. Giving the Scottish licences to the only Scottish commercial broadcaster is hardly a measure of plurality.
I could go on. This is an organisation that is totally out of control and lost up its own backside. It commissions and writes report and lets down the British people. It is a disgrace of the highest order and the fact that Dave & Co hasn't followed through on its promise for total reform shows what a spineless bunch of wet rich boys we have running our country.
The idea that OFCOM be given the brief for print regulation after Leveson is terrifying and shows how dumb that guy is.
OFCOM exists to serve a small band of London based civil servants and quangoites who daily pat themselves on the back and ignore the sheer deprivation they create in rural Britain, let alone the price gouging they allow and enable in their industry. It also now serves to support government policy since the government realised how disfunctional it is over these issues. Why does a Briton, on average, spend five times more on television than an American ? And three times more on broadband and telephones than a Frenchman ? Only OFCOM can answer that. And how likely is that ?