Ofcom confirms priorities for 2017/18 30 March 2017
Ofcom has today published its 2017/18 Annual Plan, outlining its priorities for the next financial year.
Ofcom wants to make communications work for everyone. We have three main goals to achieve this; to promote competition; to secure standards and improve quality; and to protect consumers from harm.
Major work in our 2017-18 work programme includes:
continuing to implement the conclusions from our Strategic Review of Digital Communications;
successfully integrating our new responsibilities for regulating the BBC, and
awarding further mobile spectrum (2.3GHz and 3.4GHz bands) to help meet the growing demand for mobile services.
Ofcom's Annual Plan follows consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and consumers.
Promoting competitionTo enable competition, we are overseeing changes to the governance of Openreach the division which runs the majority of the UK's broadband network to make it a more independent and legally separate part of the BT Group. This will ensure Openreach makes decisions for the good of all consumers, not just BT's customers.
We will also make it easier for BT's competitors to invest in their own infrastructure by improving access to Openreach's network of telegraph poles and ducts' the underground tunnels that carry telecoms cables.
Ofcom wants to ensure that consumers are aware of the choices available to them. Information on the availability, quality, and price of communications plays an important role in helping people make decisions.
In the coming weeks, we will publish information on communication providers' quality of service, showing how they perform against different metrics, so that people can shop around for the best deal for their needs. We will also improve people's ability to engage with the market and switch providers.
Securing standards and improving qualityOfcom becomes the first independent, external regulator of the BBC on 3 April 2017. As part of our new responsibilities, we will introduce a new approach to assessing the BBC's performance, including the distinctiveness of its programmes and services.
We will also ensure the BBC serves its audiences in all four of the UK's Nations, reflecting their diversity and that of communities up and down the country.
Everyone in the UK should be able to access phone and internet services, including those living and working in rural and remote areas. We will continue to work with the Government to deliver its plans for a new, universal right to decent, affordable broadband.
We also intend to increase the capacity of mobile networks by making available valuable new airwaves. This can improve mobile coverage, and help meet the growing demand for mobile broadband.
We will implement a range of measures to ensure that all phone and broadband companies provide the quality of service customers expect. We will require phone and broadband companies to compensate customers automatically, if their service standards are not met. We will also set more demanding quality targets for Openreach.
Protecting consumers from harmOfcom protects consumers from harmful practices or offensive content through its investigations and enforcement work.
We closely monitor the markets we regulate, and will continue to address harmful practices swiftly and firmly, which can involve fining companies if they break our rules.
In our review of the landline-only market, we explained our concerns that landline-only customers are not benefitting from competitive prices. We will ensure that these consumers, who are often elderly, get value for money from their landline phone when we implement the conclusions of this review.
We will continue to reduce nuisance calls by working with industry and partners, such as the Information Commissioner's Office, to block these calls at a network level, so they do not reach consumers.
We will continue to protect audiences from harmful material on TV and radio, by assessing all complaints we receive under our broadcasting rules. We will also ensure that the on-demand services we regulate meet the rules designed to protect viewers.
This year, we will also be responsible for investigating complaints around the BBC's due accuracy and due impartiality for the first time.
Our work in the UK's nations and regionsOfcom works on behalf of people across all the nations and regions of the UK. We do this by working closely with a wide range of organisations through our offices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; and by engaging with our four national Advisory Committees.
We will make changes to our Board over the coming year, with the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast each appointing a new Ofcom Board member.
We have consulted with devolved governments on our priorities, and have provided evidence to Committees of the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and National Assembly for Wales.
Maintaining value for moneyThe Government has confirmed its ongoing commitment to reduce the deficit in public finances and we will play our part in meeting this challenge.
Ofcom has delivered 12 consecutive years of like-for-like real-terms budget reductions, and we will continue to reduce spending wherever we can.
Our 2017/18 Annual Plan reflects our commitment to provide value for money and our budget, set at £121.7m, includes capacity for our new responsibilities regulating the BBC.
Excluding the £6.2m additional costs related to our new BBC responsibilities and costs relating to our London headquarters in order to make long-term savings, this represents a 1.8% real-terms reduction from 2016/17.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Ofcom confirms priorities for 2017/18 30 March 2017 
