Link: ICSTIS Consumer – Adjudications
Remember the GMTV fiasco? The TV broadcasters telecoms provider Opera has just been fined £250k by regulator ICSTIS and been issued a ban for running premium services for 12 months (rather sadly suspended for 12 months on condition they ‘clean up their act’) for their part in the scandal
Having had a brief scan of the rather wordy adjudication, a few things are interesting. ICSTIS, given the choice, would have imposed a fine a lot higher than £250k. However, they’re stuck with that cap – and can’t go above it. As well as the fine, and having been well and truely slapped hard by ICSTIS, they’ve been told they can’t run *any* premium services for twelve months – but get this: it’s been suspended on the condition that they play fair from now on, have an audit of procedures, etc etc.
If ICSTIS are trying to persuade consumers to regain confidence in premium telephony and SMS, they should have banished GMTV and Opera from the face of the planet. This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill minor ‘cock-up’ – it’s a multi-million pound fraud that both parties knew damn well about. Even if they refund everyone concerned (which is highly unlikely, as let’s face it – most consumers aren’t going to bother trying to get their cash back), the damage has been done.
Even now, ICSTIS are concerned about Opera and their future conduct. It remains to see whether they’ll be able to play fair in the future – but for now, in my opinion, they’ve got off lightly.
“…would have imposed a fine a lot higher than £250k. However, they’re stuck with that cap – and can’t go above it”
Piffle – ask Andrew Bud – he’ll tell you that they can fine up to £250k PER BREACH. That is, for every single customer who got ripped off, they can fine £250k.
@John: from the adjudication..
“64. The ICSTIS Sanctions Guide separates fines into various bands according to seriousness. The panel considers that Opera was absolutely right to concede that this case falls into the ‘very serious’ bracket where the band runs up to £250,000. ICSTIS cannot impose a fine larger than this for a breach of a single paragraph of the Code. Bearing in mind the principle of proportionality, and taking into account the degree of consumer harm, the revenue received and the size of Opera’s turnover, it is clear that, but for this cap, it would be possible to justify a fine well in excess of the limit of £250,000.”
They are talking rubbish – phone Andrew Bud up and ask him for a quote as an ICSTIS industry representative.
To clarify my last post – when the £250k limit was first discussed, I heard Andrew arguing back against a claim that it was in his interest to have a low fine limit – the industry was expecting it to be raised to £1mill . He defended ICSTIS’s position in the light of the Jamster scandal by saying that it was “per breach” of the code, and not as ICSTIS are saying now “per paragraph”. Consequently, ICSTIS could, if they had the backbone, fine Opera £2 per breach (appropriate regard to proportionality) and identify 2 million breaches of the code over the course of 2 years.
It looks like OFCOM aren’t happy with the size of the fine (according to 5LIve news while I was cooking my tea) so I’d not be surprised if they slap on an extra few quid, at least bringing slightly more recompense than the 10% or so they appear to have been fined in proportion to the estimated amount they ripped the customers off by.
So ICSTIS (or PhonePayPlus, which is their soon-to-be new more ‘cuddly’, er I mean ‘consumer friendly’ name, has pretty much screwed that one up then.
At least the Daily Mail has something to write about tomorrow to do with txt 🙂
YAY! Finally, OFCOM have seen sense and slapped Opera harder with a £2million fine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7001032.stm
Just to correct Loulou’s comment, it’s actually GMTV who’ve been fined by Ofcom. It would be nice if Opera had been made to pay that too – but as far as I know Ofcom don’t have powers to override ICSTIS without quite a bit of legal shenanigans ensuing.
[…] days after their ex-service provider Opera Telecom was slapped with a £250k fine by premium watchdog ICSTIS, the Government’s broadcast regulator Ofcom have handed out a £2m fine to GMTV for their […]
A locally based company called Opera Interactive (Barbados) Ltd, has been operating a number of phone/text in competitions here on Barbados. I have been callied on our regulatory authorities to ensure they publish a list of winners.
One of the competitions, Barbados Lucky Numbers, has carried the same winning number for the duration of the competition (nearly three months).
At first the company’s spokesperson denied that they had anything to do with Opera Telecom (UK) but a company search revealed that Gary Corbett was a listed director. Subsequently he stated to our Fair Trading Commission that he had resigned from the Barbados based comapny.
There are also Opera Interactive registered companies in Trinidad and Jamaica.
No list of winners has yet been published.
They are also operating another compitition called Caribbean Phone Idol and when you look uo their website, its ‘under construction’.
thanks!