Premium
rate phone services are regulated by the Independent Committee for
the Supervision of Standards in the Telephone Information Services
(ICSTIS), which follows an Ofcom approved code. That code applies
to communications providers, but the code has always exempted those
providing "a Mobile Service, a Personal Numbering Service or a
Radiopaging Service", according to Ofcom.
That means that anyone who breaks ICSTIS rules but comes under
that exemption cannot be referred to Ofcom, and cannot have action
taken against them by Ofcom under the terms of the Communications
Act.
The exemption was intended to exclude from regulation normal
calls to mobile phones and other mobile services which the
regulator said should not count as premium rate services even
though they were relatively expensive.
Ofcom will delete the exemption altogether in a revision of the
premium rate services condition in exactly one month's time.
The change is the result of two consultations. The first
consultation propsed changing the exclusion so that it excluded not
“mobile services” but “calls to mobile services”, " thus removing
any perceived uncertainty as to whether calls from mobile phones to
premium rate services were or were not also excluded from the
definition", according to an Ofcom statement.
But during further consultation Ofcom was told that the
amendment was at least as confusing as the original statement.
"That modification had the potential to itself cause confusion,
thereby substantially defeating the purpose of making the
modification in the first place," said the Ofcom statement.
A second consultation was conducted, following which Ofcom
decided to scrap the exclusion altogether. "Such removal would
enable the clarification that Ofcom was seeking to provide to be
delivered in a neat and simple way that did not have an apparent
potential to itself give rise to confusion as to what the
definition did and did not capture," said the Ofcom statement.
"That view was fully in accordance with the original intention
behind the exclusion, namely, to make clear that ordinary calls to
mobile phones and other services which enabled the called party to
be reached irrespective of his or her physical location were not
within the scope of [the regulation]," it said.
