So, what a difference. You have the Chinese mobile phone companies fining companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for publishing misleading ads.
Welcome to the UK where we effectively encourage it! Mike at www.160characters.org has just posted this piece saying that ICSTIS, the UK regulator, has just issured an immediate halt to service providers abusing guidelines.
The piece goes on to quote ICSTIS saying,
"ICSTIS is now notifying service providers and network operators that
such services are in breach of the Code of Practice and that they must
cease as soon as possible."
I’d really like to see them being more toothy instead of toothless. "As soon as possible?"
Nonsense! Tell them to cease operations effective tonight at midnight.
This is NOT difficult. It really isn’t.
"We trust that networks and their commercial partners will be able to
bring the harm to a halt this week without us having to take further
enforcement action" says George Kidd [from ICSTIS]
I’ve met George, he’s a super guy. I sat next to him at a dinner once.
However I just don’t think this position is good enough. I know there’s a lot of politics to consider. It’s just not good enough to "trust" that networks and commercial partners will do anything to kill the revenue they’re making, hand over first, from their customers screwing end-consumers. Sure, the networks will do some half hearted nonsense. Usually you’re lucky if they send round a note to everybody saying "please don’t do this".
If the industry really wanted to ensure end-consumers did not fall into annoying and expensive traps, they could fix it over night. But then they’d all lose a ton of revenue. A ton.
Anyway, I’m pleased to see them taking some action.
The link to Mike’s article is here and is well worth a read.