The Open Rights Group is a new not-for-profit digital rights activist group, working to raise the profile of digital rights issues in the media and help other groups get their voices heard. Its goals are:
* to raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses
* to [...]
Strange Moments with VLV (3).
In its current annual plan Ofcom denotes a new work stream reviewing the way it approaches its duty to ‘further the interests of citizens in relation to communications’. But it has said nothing publicly about what this work stream includes. The grapevine says that the Ofcom Board held a half day [...]
Or, Strange Moments with VLV (2).
Giving a typically ebullient (not to say aggressive) performance to the Voice of the Listener and Viewer’s members at their autumn conference today, Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter majored on what he clearly still feels is an unresolved problem with UK TV — namely the imminent lack of competition to [...]
Or, Strange Moments with VLV (1).
As we know Freeview has been the runaway success of digital TV, its take-up ever rising. But at VLV’s autumn conference today the platform’s general manager admitted there were people who are told they can’t get the service when actually they can. It all comes down to the way that [...]
Great article in the Times (Jill Sherman) focusing on EnergyWatch and PostWatch. The article states:
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report said that huge numbers of complaints
relating to wrong energy bills and lost mail were continuing to pour in five years after the groups were set up. Energywatch and Postwatch were established by the Government in [...]
In some ways, Ofcom is like an iceberg. Most people only see a small proportion which is above the waterline. Below, there are a great many other issues and activities which support the more visible part of Ofcom’s work. A good example is numbering – an esoteric subject but, without numbers, nothing in telecoms would [...]
In the initial days of digital broadcasting Spain was one of the European success stories. By 2002 the country was, together with the UK and Sweden, at the forefront of developments in digital satellite television and leading the way towards digital terrestrial. Today, however, after arbitrary political decisions, a major bankruptcy of their digital terrestrial [...]
The Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) has concluded that Ofcom erred in its decision to designate Hutchinson 3G (H3G) as an operator with significant market power (SMP) in the market for wholesale call termination on its network.
The CAT agreed with ‘3′ that Ofcom “did not carry out a full assessment of the extent to which BT [...]
The European Commission has released a Working Document, constituting a formal Call for Input on the forthcoming review of the European Union regulatory framework for electronic communications, and including the review of the Recommendation on Relevant Markets Susceptible to Ex-Ante Regulation.
A public workshop will be organised on 24 January 2006, and written contributions from interested [...]
In today’s Independent Media Weekly, Glover writes in part:
If Sir Christopher Meyer is made to resign, that would give comfort to the
opponents of an independent Press Complaints Commission and the supporters of
government supervision of the media. A minor embarrassment might have been
removed, but at the cost of a major concession to the enemies of a [...]
BT is always banging on about how it made good on its commitment to enable rural and remote exchanges for broadband, thereby allowing people in non-urban areas to benefit from new communications technologies.
So it interesting to note that although BT might claim it did all of this good work by itself in some instances it [...]
The newly-formed Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has published its first Consumer Bulletin. There’s plain guide to broadband, advice on phishing, and lots more. What a great idea and one for Ofcom to consider.
I’ve been meaning to post on this … OfcomWatch was invited to give a talk at the weekly media seminar at the London School of Economics on the 10th of November. There were about 40-60 Media and Communications masters degree students in attendance. My topic was initially divided into three parts: (i) [...]
The Guardian reports that Ofcom is to clear its seventh floor of staff and sub-let the space in an effort to meet its committment to cut costs year on year. The newspaper says -
“Media regulator Ofcom is trying to cut costs by clearing staff from the seventh floor of its South Bank building in order [...]
Ofcom’s Director of Communications Matt Peacock has responded to my earlier post on the regulator’s failure to publish their research in regard to FA Premier League football television rights -
“The point you are missing from your list and which I made very clear to Russ [Taylor - OW Co-Founder] is that we have not had [...]
Folks, what is nicer than a mid-winter trek out to Oxford?
The Oxford Media Convention will be held January 19th at the Sa�d Business School. The annual event is organised by the ippr, the MediaGuardian and Oxford PCMLP. Click here (.pdf) for a programme.
Last year, my favourite moment was Ofcom smacking down Andy Duncan’s [...]
It’s now been a week since the European Commission announced their decision in regard to the sale of television rights for live Premiership football games from 2007. There will be six packages with no one broadcaster allowed to own all of the rights. The fine print details of these packages are yet to emerge, but [...]
The UN World Summit on the Information Society held on 16-18 November concluded with adoption with the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. Paragraphs 72-82 of the Agenda deal with the establishment of a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which is due to have its first meeting in [...]
DG Information Society and Media has commissioned a series of four monitoring reports at 9 months intervals, on the market for electronic communications networks and services in 8 EU candidate and potential candidate countries (these are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey). The [...]
In this letter, written to Deputy PM John Prescott posted on the Press Complaints Commission website, Sir Christopher Meyer defends his position as chair of the PCC. Meyer says in part:
You say that the public will also have little confidence in my chairing the PCC impartially when they know that I have sat down [...]
Latest from Ofcom