Ofcom Examines Impact of AI on the Experience of UK Telecoms Customers

The UK communications and media regulator, Ofcom (Office of Communications), has today kicked off a new consultation that aims to gather feedback in order to examine the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the experience of broadband and mobile customers – both its positives and negatives.

Over the past few years we’ve seen network operators and retail service providers adopting AI in all sorts of different ways, such as to make their network infrastructure more energy efficiency and faster. Various AI solutions have also been adopted to help improve customer service and support (communication), such as through more efficient processing of customer data and other things like intelligent chatbots.

For example, all the major broadband and mobile providers, such as Vodafone (here), BT (here), TalkTalk (here) and Virgin Media / O2 (here), have already adopted and are continuing to evolve such solutions at various different levels. Some are also using it to help pro-actively identify and block scam calls and spam texts before they reach customers.

However, consumer sentiment toward the use of certain features, such as AI chatbots, tends to be quite mixed, with many viewing it as being more of a negative (i.e. a way of reducing the number of actual humans that are available to provide support over the longer term). On the other hand, if such systems do end up making it quicker and easier for customers to get their issues resolved, then that would still be a positive change.

Regulator’s Statement

“We want to understand how residential and business customers, telecoms providers and third-party applications in the telecoms value chain are currently using AI tools and technologies and how this is likely to evolve in the future. Further, we want to explore how this may have the potential to change customers’ experience of telecoms markets.

The relevant tools and technologies could include generative AI and AI agents that are designed to act autonomously and make decisions with limited human intervention (and more people and businesses may adopt personal AI agents9 that act on their behalf online).

…

Our work will focus on three specific areas:

1. How tools are currently being deployed and used across the telecoms sector, for instance to handle customer conversations, and how customers, including businesses, are affected.

2. The evolving nature of such technologies, and the opportunities and risks these tools present to the telecoms customer journey.

3. How our rules can support responsible innovation and growth, while continuing to protect consumers. “

Ofcom envisages that this consultation could ultimately result in some changes to their rules further down the road. For example, they might consider whether the specific protections they have in place for consumers in “vulnerable situations” are adequate and what protections might be needed for customers who do not feel comfortable using AI tools.

The regulator is inviting views from telecoms providers, businesses, researchers, developers, consumer groups and the public. Comments and submissions, including requests for discussions, should be sent to the team by 10th March 2026. Ofcom aims to publish their analysis, along with further research in this area, during the second half of 2026.