Category: Regulation

According to the Telegraph (via Yahoo! News), lawyers in the U.S. are intending to summon the UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom to a U.S. court to answer over its attempts to ‘censor Americans’. “A legal complaint, filed in Washington, DC, by Ron Coleman, a New York-based lawyer, aims to bar Ofcom from attempting to enforce the […]

Ofcom has opened a consultation on super-complaints under the Online Safety Act, including the criteria for the bodies which will be able to submit them to the regulator. What are super-complaints? They are a type of complaint which eligible organisations are able to make to Ofcom which places specific requirements on Ofcom to respond within […]

The Online Safety Act that gained Royal Assent in 2023 is keeping Ofcom busy. The latest company to be added to the growing list of firms under investigation is Duplanto Ltd. This brings the total to five investigations underway looking into porn site providers with relation to age checks. With some firms running multiple sites […]

The Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has told BBC Newsnight that she believes VPNs should be required to verify the age of anyone subscribing to their service. This follows the massive uptake of VPN services following the Online Safety Act’s age verification requirements kicking in. The website 4chan yesterday told Ofcom where to stick […]

The battle is warming up with regards to the Online Safety Act, as 4chan has responded to the provisional notice of contravention that Ofcom issued to the sites operator recently. “Provisional Decision: Information Notice duties In accordance with section 130 of the Online Safety Act 2023, we have today issued 4chan Community Support LLC with […]

Ofcom has this morning announced it has launched investigations into 34 adult content websites which it believes are failing to comply with the age verification requirements of Section 12 of the Online Safety Act which took effect last week. As of Friday, the rules require such adult content websites to use ‘highly effective age assurance’ […]

Ofcom have fined fibre broadband provider Gigaclear £122,500 for failures in providing location data to emergency services. Ofcom Regulations known as ‘General Conditions A3.5 and A3.6(a)’ require providers to provide accurate location information for all calls to emergency phone numbers where possible, particularly for fixed location based services such as phone lines. Ofcom’s investigation found […]

A key part of the Online Safety Act took effect on Friday, requiring certain websites (such as those with adult content) to carry out reliable age verification checks before allowing access to users. This has resulted in a kind of cookie-consent type banner appearing before loading pages, requiring the user to prove they are over […]

From April 2026, consumers will be able to escalate a complaint about their service if their complaint has not been resolved within six weeks. Current rules allow an escalation to Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) at the 8-week mark, but following a consultation and review launched in November 2023, Ofcom has decided to decrease the time […]

Ofcom has fined broadband alt-net BRSK £14,000 for two failures in relation to telegraph pole installations in Birmingham, which are used to roll out their full fibre broadband network. Ofcom announced an investigation in to BRSK in 2024 as it believed it had breached its ‘Code Powers’ following a complaint from Birmingham City Council . […]