An important part of Ofcom's work is to ensure that consumers receive value for money from their communications services. Encouraging and promoting consumer participation in communications markets is also one of our key priorities.
To fulfil these responsibilities, Ofcom has focused on securing the availability of a wide range of communications services, while carrying out work to understand the reasons why some citizens do not use them, or have difficulty doing so.
This section contains publications in two related areas: the affordability of essential services, and research into the causes and incidence of unexpectedly high bills (bill shock).
Affordability of Communications Services Tracker 2016 (PDF, 473.0 KB) Dec 2016
Affordability of Communications data tables including boost sample (PDF, 7.9 MB) Dec 2016
Affordability of Communications data tables nat rep sample (PDF, 7.7 MB) Dec 2016
Affordability Tracker 2016 data (CSV, 7.7 MB) Dec 2016
Affordability of communications services omnibus (PDF, 289.9 KB) Nov 2015
Omnibus carried out by Kantar Media November 2015
Affordability of communications services - data tables (PDF, 1.8 MB) Nov 2015
Ofcom Communication Provider Mystery Shopping: affordability shops Jan 2015
Affordability of essential communications services: a qualitative research study (PDF, 2.1 MB) Jul 2014
Criteria to define essential telecoms services - Literature review (PDF, 1.1 MB)
A report for Ofcom by The ESRC Centre for Competition Policy (CCP)
Criteria to define essential telecoms services (literature review) (PDF, 1.1 MB) Nov 2013
Incidence of unexpectedly high bills: 2014 report May 2014
'Bill Shock' Online research in the contract mobile phone market (PDF, 353.7 KB) Nov 2013
Mis-selling and bill shock (PDF, 2.2 MB) Dec 2012
Unexpectedly high bills (PDF, 482.9 KB) Nov 2010
Transparency in Telephone Numbering research (PDF, 105.7 KB) Jul 2008