Number Supermarket, based on Stamford New Road in Altrincham, helps companies across the UK build their brands nationally – and now wants to make sure that organisations in the Altrincham area are making the most of the marketing opportunities that a telephone system can provide. In this second of three columns, Andrew Nelson runs through some of the recent Ofcom changes…
Ofcom recently released its proposed annual plan for 2017/18 which entails their plans and changes for the year ahead. In this, they named three long-term goals which they hope to work on over the next year:
- Protect consumers from harm
- Secure standards and improve quality
- Promote competition and ensure that markets work effectively for consumers
Let us first focus on the main point, protecting consumers from harm. Ofcom aims to prevent harmful behaviour from firms and to prevent or at least regulate offensive content appearing on TV and radio. They plan to consider changes in regulation to promote competition in the landline market to ensure that consumers who want a landline-only deal will have more choice and get better value for money as at the moment there is concern that the landline market is dominated by a very small number of firms and so consumers may not be getting a good deal.
Ofcom also plan on reducing the amount of ‘nuisance calls’ that consumers get, such as cold calls or scam calls.
As for the second point – securing standards and improving quality – Ofcom’s aim is to improve the availability of broadcast and communication services via regulation to promote competition as well as intervening in the markets where competition alone doesn’t achieve this.
Finally, promoting competition and ensuring that markets work effectively for all consumers. This goal is to ensure that the telecommunication markets work efficiently and offer consumers and businesses a range of choices at fair prices, by promoting competition in these markets.
Ofcom also plans on putting price controls on BT’s public network to ensure that all internet service providers have the opportunity to employ their own fibre networks, which should increase the number of firms in the market, allowing consumers to have more choice and in theory also driving prices down.
If you or your business would like to stay ahead of Ofcom changes in the coming years for telecoms, Altrincham-based Number Supermarket inform their customers of all alterations to legislation well ahead of time. You can buy an 0330 number from Number Supermarket here: https://www.numbersupermarket.co.uk/03-numbers/
See also: How a simple change of telephone number can make a big difference to your business
