Ofcom has published a new Electronic Communications Code of practice, as well as a statement in response to a consultation setting out proposals for amending the code of practice. The code of practice was put in place to address agreements for access to private land under the Electronic Communications Code. The new code of practice includes guidance on the process for resolving disputes that may arise between operators and site providers and best practice in relation to alternative dispute resolution procedures, facilitating the fast and simple resolution of disputes.

Ofcom has published new rules and guidance requiring mobile operators and business messaging aggregators to strengthen protections against mobile messaging scams, alongside updated guidance on tackling international calls that spoof UK mobile numbers. The new measures require mobile operators to collect scam reports, block numbers used by scammers, block scam messages in transit and introduce volume limits for pay-as-you-go SIMs, while mobile operators and aggregators must also carry out Know Your Customer and Know Your Traffic checks, verify alphanumeric sender IDs, apply incident management processes, and ensure anti-scam controls are applied throughout the business messaging supply chain. Providers must also maintain processes for challenging blocked messages, review and monitor their anti-scam measures, train staff, keep records, address false positives and comply with data protection legislation. The strengthened guidance also advises telecoms providers to withhold caller identification for international calls appearing to originate from UK mobile numbers unless the caller ID can be verified. The person-to-person rules take effect on 18 January 2027 and the application-to-person rules take effect on 15 July 2027.

Ofcom has published a note to broadcasters about the election programming in the General Election set to take place on 4 July 2024. The note covers key points to consider about the General Election programming, a summary of the Broadcasting Code requirements for election programming, due impartiality requirements in the pre-election period, a summary of requirements relating to politicians as presenters and other information to assist broadcasters in their compliance of election programming.

Ofcom has published its online safety research agenda, highlighting areas of research interest that will support its understanding in the future and inform its online safety policy work, which includes user activity and behaviour, online risk and harm, service design, and safety measures and technology. The research agenda also highlighted Ofcom’s commitment to invest in research to ensure it broadens its evidence base in line with the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA 2023) and its commitment to prioritise online safety and its programme of children’s research, using various tools to provide a more comprehensive view of children’s experiences, attitudes, and behaviours. This may include expansion of some of Ofcom’s surveys, developing skills in avatar methods and advancing its children’s passive measurement techniques. Ofcom also intends to advance its Online Safety Lab to further assess safety technologies and invest in generative artificial intelligence research, among other things.

Ofcom has published an open letter from the Director of Mobile Network Strategy, Brian Potterill, to mobile network operators regarding 2026 voice review and business SMS messaging. The letter outlines that business messaging services have significantly grown with business messaging mainly occurring via SMS over mobile networks. Ofcom has received concerns about the effect of wholesale price increases, the effect of stability of wholesale pricing on the retail market’s innovation and the lack of competition at the wholesale level. In response to these concerns, Ofcom intends to monitor the market for wholesale SMS termination and its impact on the retail business messaging market and will consider whether to include the retail business messaging market within its wholesale voice markets review 2026-31, which is due to start in 2024 to allow it to determine whether regulatory interventions are required to promote effective competition.

Ofcom has published an open letter from the Group Director for Online Safety, Gill Whitehead, to online service providers operating in the UK regarding the increased risk of their platforms being used to stir up hatred, provoke violence and commit other offences under UK law, in the context of recent acts of violence in the UK. The letter reminds online services of their duty to protect users from videos likely to incite violence or hatred under Ofcom’s regulations, as well as the Online Safety Act 2023. The letter expresses the increased need, following recent events, for video-sharing platforms to ensure that their systems and processes are effective in anticipating and responding to the potential spread of harmful video material. Ofcom expects to continue engaging with online service providers to understand the specific issues they face, and welcomes any proactive approaches deployed by some services in relation to these acts of violence across the UK. Ofcom added that online services will have three months from when its final codes of practice and guidance are published later in the year to assess the risk of illegal content, which can include content involving hatred, disorder, provoking violence or certain instances of disinformation, on their platforms and take appropriate steps to stop it appearing.

Ofcom has published a follow-up discussion paper exploring attribution measures for detecting and labelling deepfakes, such as watermarking, metadata, and AI labels. The paper assesses their strengths and limitations and draws on technical evaluations and expert input. While not formal guidance, the findings will inform Ofcom’s supervision of regulated services under the Online Safety Act 2023.

Ofcom has published a progress update report on its approach to implementing the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA 2023). The progress update sets out the measures Ofcom has taken in its role as online safety regulator in the 12 months since the OSA 2023 received Royal Assent. It also highlights the requirements online service providers need to fulfil to protect their users from illegal content and to protect children from harmful content in the next phase of the implementation of the OSA 2023. Further, Ofcom emphasises that a new phase of the implementation will commence in December 2024, with the Illegal Harms  Codes of Practice and illegal content risk assessment guidance being published, which will require all in-scope providers to begin assessing the risks of illegal content appearing on their platforms from December 2024 and disclose a risk assessment from 31 March 2025. This will be followed by a children's access assessment guidance in January 2025 and Protection of Children Codes of Practice and risk assessment guidance in April 2025. The government is also expected to confirm the thresholds to be used to designate a small proportion of regulated services into Category 1, 2A or 2B services by the end of 2024, determining whether they are required to comply with additional safety requirements.

Ofcom has published a report by Praesidio Safeguarding following research and engagement workshops with children aged 13-17 as part of its illegal harms consultation. The report, which shares children’s views about Ofcom’s proposals for measures to protect children from the risks of online grooming, found that the surveyed children generally supported the measures and felt it was important to do more to protect children online. The most widely supported measures were the proposals for services to provide supportive information to children and to disable location sharing settings my default. However, proposals for new default settings for user connections and direct messaging were seen as likely to negatively impact children’s ability to socialise online. The report also states that children would want to be able to tailor their experiences in as granular way as possible to retain some of the freedoms they already have and felt it might be challenging to prevent communication from potential perpetrators of grooming offences on services that do not require users to be connected in order to send direct messages. The importance of educating children on making informed choices was also highlighted.

Ofcom has published expert advice it commissioned from State of Life (SoL), which evaluated the feasibility of using wellbeing metrics to assess the outcomes in online safety (OS), alongside an Economic Discussion Paper which contextualises the advice within Ofcom's broader evaluation work. The SoL report found the wellbeing metrics, complemented with other metrics, could be very important to OS evaluation and recommended that Ofcom prioritises using existing metrics on life satisfaction and how children feel about their lives online, as well as monitoring wellbeing trends before, during and after the Online Safety Act 2023’s (OSA 2023) phased rollout. The report also advised Ofcom to focus on using the life satisfaction question and existing ‘domain-specific’ questions which connect wellbeing to online activity and safety and collect new data internally or through partnerships with third parties.

Ofcom has published a report on the future of TV distribution. This is in response to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s request for a review of market changes affecting content reach on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in 2022. Key findings of the report are that people are spending less time watching TV broadcast over DTT, and changing audience habits and rising costs could force a tipping point within the next decade where investment in DTT cannot be sustained, reducing DTT to a core service. However, a campaign towards DTT switch-off in the longer term could sustain the availability of TV services.

Ofcom has published a report analysing mobile network resilience during power outages, following a consultation launched in December 2023 which aimed to promote a discussion on the power backups that mobile network operators (MNOs) should provide for their networks and services. Through a quantitative examination of current mobile infrastructure data provided by MNOs, Ofcom found that approximately two-thirds of citizens can make emergency calls for up to one hour during a power outage. Ofcom estimates the cost to upgrade mobile networks to ensure almost universal access to emergency services for up to four hours would be approximately £1bn. The report also highlights power back up approaches in countries facing similar issues such as Australia, Switzerland and Norway and key considerations for improving power resilience.