Mobile Phones

(asked on 19th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department has taken to support the introduction of gaining provider-led switching systems since the publication of his Department's report, Connectivity, Content and Consumers in July 2013.


Answered by
Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait
Lord Vaizey of Didcot
This question was answered on 26th November 2014

DCMS officials have frequent contact with Ofcom to take forward this work. I want the switching process to be as easy and straightforward as possible for consumers and I recognise that switching processes work better for consumers when only one call needs to be made for the switch to happen, to the gaining provider. Working with Ofcom, we will do everything we can to move towards a system of gaining-provider led switching across the board.

In July, Ofcom published a call for inputs (which closed in September) on switching providers of broadband, pay-TV, mobile voice and data services and bundled services, in order to gauge the impact of these processes on consumers’ experience and on competition. Ofcom is conducting further research and holding discussions with industry and consumer organisations. It will publish a document setting out its findings in the first half of 2015.

We set out our thinking on GPL switching in the Connectivity, Content and Consumers [CCC} Strategy Paper, published in July 2013. In December 2013 Ofcom announced that GPL switching would be mandated for broadband and fixed telephony over the Openreach network. Full implementation of this will be completed by June 2015. Since then, Ofcom has been assessing the consumer experience of switching mobile services, pay-TV and bundles of electronic communications services and will report in the first half of 2015, as I describe above.

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