Our international work on telecoms and digital markets
Ofcom works with networks and partners around the world to coordinate our regulation of telecoms and digital markets. We also represent the UK on some of these matters internationally.
We want to make a positive contribution to international legislative and regulatory developments that affect our responsibilities, as well as the lives of people in the UK.
What we do
We engage with international networks, and with our counterparts in Europe and around the world. This engagement can be bilateral or, like the Independent Regulators Group, on a multilateral basis.
Of particular interest are ongoing developments in the telecoms market, including:
- the move to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services;
- the switch-off of 2G and 3G mobile networks; and
- scam calls and messages.
We’re also interested in technological developments and new consumer protection issues.
As people communicate seamlessly online and offline, we know that we need to understand digital markets as well as we understand traditional telecoms. So, we scan digital markets for international developments and competition issues that might affect our work. Areas we have recently explored include cloud services, net neutrality and wider digital platform regulation, where we learned from the experiences of other countries as part of our decision-making.
We also work with the UK Government so that we represent the UK appropriately on telecoms matters at relevant international forums, including: