Mostly Mobile

Summary

One-page summary

Mobile has become central to UK citizens and consumers. In the future, our telecommunications will be mostly mobile.

Driving this success has been competition between mobile operators. As a result, the great majority of people in the UK use mobile services. Innovation is ongoing: we are using more text and data services; mobile internet access is taking off; and devices can do more and cost less.

However, not everyone benefits from these developments equally. Some consumers find the variety of mobile prices and services confusing, while others suffer from harm or inconvenience. Elderly and disabled people still have lower take-up. And coverage not-spots persist.

Our focus will be on resolving these issues. We propose to achieve this by using markets where we can. We also recognise the limits of markets and will respond to risks of market failure and to consumer protection needs with focused intervention. We are widening our focus to reflect the importance and complexity of mobile services:

• Competition. We will ensure that consumers continue to enjoy the benefits of competition. We have initiated a review of the market for mobile call termination. This will consider how the regime needs to evolve, whether the rates should be reduced, and if so how quickly, following the expiry of the current charge controls. We also intend to take an active approach to reducing the barriers facing new entrants but do not propose to undertake a wider formal market review of the mobile sector (unless there is a material change in the market).
• Consumers. Competition alone is not always sufficient to ensure consumers are properly protected, and enabled to make well-informed choices. We have already taken action to protect consumers from mis-selling and unfair additional charges. The mobile sector is becoming more diverse and further consumer issues are likely to arise. We propose to provide regulatory certainty for consumers and providers by adopting a framework that sets out: our consumer protection objectives, how we will assess their achievement and how we will develop our regulatory response to any emerging consumer issues.
• Coverage. We will look more closely into the persistent not-spot problem and work where we can to facilitate better coverage. We welcome the Governments work in Digital Britain to extend mobile broadband coverage, and we are also working with mobile operators and emergency services to allow roaming for 999 calls.
• Spectrum. It is vital that spectrum is available in a timely manner to optimise the prospects for competition, innovation and better mobile coverage across the UK. In addition to our own work to ensure spectrum is used efficiently, we will assist the Government in its efforts to make spectrum available for mobile broadband services through the Digital Britain process.

Overall, we consider it appropriate to build on the consumer and economic benefits that have been driven by the mobile sector rather than to adopt a new regulatory approach. Continuing regulatory activity is required, however, to help promote competition and innovation, safeguard consumer interests, and to address, where possible, those areas where the market fails to deliver (such as not spots).