Mobile Entertainment

Yesterday morning the watchdog announced new regulations – a full six months after the last lot.

This week’s measures came in response to a shocking 8,000 mobile-related complaints in 2007/8 – a 108 per cent increase on the previous year.

The first main change is ‘prior permission’. Here, content subscription providers charging over £4.50 a week must first apply for permission from PhonepayPlus to offer their services. The second is ‘active confirmation’, which dictates that any prospective subscriber must first receive a free confirmation text message detailing the Ts & Cs, giving them a chance to opt out.
 
Now, no right-minded observer could argue with these measures. But the point is not whether they are well-intentioned, but whether they will work. PPP has made it clear that its target is the ‘small number’ of rip-off merchants.

Will it succeed, or merely increase red-tape for the already beleaguered legitimate providers? The MEF is not convinced, saying the new rules appear to ‘collectively punish’ the majority.
 
I’ve chatted to a few aggregators this week too, and there’s clearly some unrest out there. Here’s what I’ve gleaned. First, why are those complaints up? Is the problem getting worse or it possible that, because mobile operators are now passing queries direct to PPP, the watchdog simply gets a higher share?

Second, is PPP filing all questions as complaints? Third, are the 8,000 complaints about two providers or 100? There’s a big difference in the response required to each.

Fourth, how can the new rules combat deliberately dodgy sellers? If someone wants to rip the public off, they can just ignore the new rules, make a quick killing and scarper back to Monaco where their company is registered before any action is taken.
 
I don’t wish to underestimate the harm caused by mis-sold content subscriptions. Until recently my wife was getting expensive texts from lascivious young ladies that she assures me she didn’t know.

Reluctantly, I believed her, and told her to text ‘STOP’. It worked, but it made me wonder whether the business could do a better job of publicising the ‘STOP’ command than introducing more punitive legislation.
 
A few months’ back the CEO of Zed told me that, thanks to PPP’s inaction in the early days, the UK market was destroyed and that it now generates less for his company than Bangladesh.

Now, just at the point in the market’s evolution where brands like Sky are starting to offer classy services that deliver real value, the watchdog appears to have swung from doing nothing to hammering out regulation every few weeks. Let's hope it works, and the Brits can overtake the Bangladeshis.