News
Zed boss launches attack on PhonepayPlus
Tim Green Sep 18 2008, 12:38pm
Zed CEO Javier Perez Dolset has blamed PhonepayPlus for 'destroying' the UK D2C content market.
Speaking to ME, Perez Dolset tore into the PPP, asserting that the watchdog’s inaction during the subscription abuses of three years ago has all but evaporated the UK business.
He explained that Zed-owned Monstermob used to generate £30 million a year in the UK, and now returns just £1 million a year.
This summer PhonepayPlus announced new rules to counter an upsurge in consumer complaints against mobile content sellers in the last 12 months.
Perez Dolset said: “It makes me angry to see PhonepayPlus coming out with all this regulation now. Where were they three years ago? They did nothing, and now they’re trying to make everyone else pay for what happened.
The UK should be a huge market – it’s the home of so much innovation. But it’s smaller for us than Bangladesh. I don’t care. It’s gone.”
Perez Dolset adds that Zed’s business is growing in virtually every one of the 54 countries its active in, and contrasted regulator approaches in other regions.
“I know there have been abuses in other countries, but the difference is that as soon as there’s a problem it is stopped. That didn’t happen in the UK three years ago," he said.
He argued that PPP’s current strategy of heavy regulation is entirely wrong, and that energies should be focused instead on re-building the business.
