Mobile Phones: Fees and Charges

(asked on 19th October 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions his Department has had with Ofcom on clarifying consumer pricing regulations in relation to mobile operators' advertised spending caps to help ensure that consumers are aware when they are being connected to a service with a network access charge not included in their spending cap.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 22nd October 2020

Mobile bill limits were introduced by the Digital Economy Act 2017, and came into effect from October 2018. Ofcom, the independent telecoms regulator, is responsible for the implementation and enforcement of this obligation. Prior to this requirement taking effect, to help consumer awareness, Ofcom published guidance on its website.

Mobile phone providers are required, under the legislation, to allow their customers to set a monthly spending cap for the services they provide, and send a notification when they are nearing limits. This means that for calls, such as to premium rate services, the ‘access charge’ is covered, i.e. the cost of the mobile operator to connect the call, but not the ‘service charge’, the actual cost of the service. To ensure consumers are aware of this facility, mobile operators allow their customers to set bill limits when signing up to services, and some providers also allow customers to set bill limits on all services, including third party services charged to their mobile.

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