Ofcom to Take on Regulation of Premium Rate Phone Services in 2025
The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has today confirmed that they will be taking on the responsibility for day-to-day regulation of Premium Rate Services (PRS) – effectively transferring them from the Phone-Paid Services Authority (PSA) – on 1st February 2025.
Consumers can access a range of interactive services via their broadband-based landline and mobile phones, as well as via computers and digital TV. Where these services are charged for via the customer’s telephone bill, they are known as phone-paid services or premium rate services (e.g. charity donations by text, music streaming, broadcast competitions, directory enquiries, voting on TV talent shows and in-app purchases).
The PSA is currently the designated day-to-day regulator for the PRS market (this derives from Ofcom having exercised its statutory powers to give the PSA that role), while Ofcom itself only provides a legal “backstop” function through enforcement of the PRS Condition. But all that is due to change on 1st February 2025, when those powers are returned from the PSA to Ofcom.
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The PSA is still said by Ofcom to have been an “effective regulator for the PRS market for many years” and has helped to significantly reduce complaints. But the market has also undergone some big changes, with legacy services – often provided via smaller companies – in decline and the rapid growth of PRS provided by global tech platforms (Apple, ITV, Sony and Google etc.) and a more compliant market. In short, bigger fish need to be managed by a bigger regulator.
This statement confirms that, following consultation in November 2023, we have decided to:
– withdraw our approval of Code 15 and replace it with the Regulation of Premium Rate Services Order 2024 (PRS Order);
– modify the PRS Condition to require compliance with the PRS Order; and
– modify our Enforcement Guidelines to set out our enforcement approach for the PRS Order and PRS Condition respectively.
To implement a smooth regulatory transfer of PRS regulation from the PSA to Ofcom and after carefully considering the responses to our November 2023 consultation, we have decided to retain in the PRS Order most of the key principles and outcomes relating to PRS regulation that were in Code 15, including:
– consumer protection standards and, specifically, requirements relating to transparency, fairness, customer care, vulnerable consumers and prevention of harm and offence;
– organisational standards and, specifically, requirements relating to registration, due diligence and risk assessment and systems; and
– other responsibilities and obligations, including funding, information requirements and records retention.
We explain in this statement how Ofcom intends to approach any enforcement action we take under this new PRS regime.
The original plan was to bring the PRS Order into force on 1st October 2024, but clearly this has taken longer than planned and so it will now be introduced early next year.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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PSA? How many more gimcrack quango jobs for the boys (and girls) are we paying for?
PSA is funded by an annual levy on PRS providers, and from penalties levied against providers who fail to comply with the PSA Code.
Do you believe the regulation of premium rate services should be done by volunteers?
@125us – OK, I’ll bite. It’s often seemed like it is being done by volunteers.
Just don’t get me started on Ofcom’s regulation of caller ID presentation.
@125 so you think we should have 200 quangos each responsible for a little slice of telecoms regulation and each with its own admin staff and well paid board and well able to tell the public “it’s not our responsibility it’s (another set of initials)”? Or maybe we should just have one? One that does its job rather then ignoring issues and looking for reasons why it can’t do anything.
@Jo and who is the cost of the levy passed on to?
The cost is passed on only to those who call registered premium rate services. The cost is effectively incorporated within the Service Charge element of the call charges, and is a vanishingly small sum per call.
Billy, can you list these 200 quangos? Or are you driving yourself into a rage about something that exists only in your head?
I honestly can’t remember the last time I called a premium rate number, probably before easyJet were banned from using them as customer service numbers, and in most businesses these numbers are blocked, they seem a relic of the past (think channel 4 Friday night, call 0898 xxx call now now now for live sexy fun fun fun, and I only ever had visions of desperate single guys holed up in some hovel getting connected to the chat asking where all the sexy girls were. Hint – I don’t think they were on that chat).
It hasn’t been entirely successful, to say the least.
Ofcom should have retained ownership from the start to make sure that unscrupulous operators were not incorrectly generating revenue from consumers.
Hopefully Ofcom will now act on the behaviour, issue some massive fines for historic breaches and close these operators down…exactly what should have been happening from the start. I won’t be holding my breath though.
The original plan was to bring the PRS Order into force on 1st October 2024, having originally planned to be published in June/July 2024 – but the calling of an early general election delayed the publication of the PRS Order by three or four months, until October 2024, and the implementation by a further four months, until February 2025.