<RANT>
In the UK, if you want to ride a moped, you have to be trained and pass a test. Why? Because you’re a danger to yourself and others, without a modicum of understanding of the rules of the road.
Want to flip burgers at McDonald’s? They have to train you, legally, in food safety. While not a legal requirement, many employers in the service industry require food handlers to undertake a Level 2 minimum Food Hygiene Certificate to discharge this. Why? Because improperly handled food is a danger to the public
Want to charge people to run them to the airport? You guessed it, you need a licence. Want to run a bar at a charity event? Guess what? Yep. A licence. Find game birds tasty and want to shoot them? Shock horror – you need a licence.
But if you want to operate a telecommunications service, upon which people’s lives may depend on its operation when they need an ambulance, no such prerequisite checks apply. The Government (albeit as a matter of its implementation of retained EU law) thinks someone flipping a burger is a bigger risk to the public than a “network” with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Is it any wonder that the bowels of our industry are occupied by those who are referred to as “scrotes” in these blogs. The recent eye-watering leasing issues in the press, scam callers, the unfortunate incident Simon recently described that’s being litigated.
You don’t even need to tell the regulator you exist and are operating these services unless you have a certain outage (and even then we know they are not reported) or your turnover exceeds an arbitrary threshold.
But riding a Vespa or flipping a burger requires more scrutiny? OK then.
This is an area that needs changing. We’re not suggesting the colonoscopy level of invasive checks that Team Telecom at the FCC do on anyone that even looks at a network switch stateside, but something like the Irish, with an online notification to COMREG and an annual affirmation would be an incredible start.
And a fit and proper person test, like in broadcast, would give the regulator power to stop certain scrotes from phoenixing businesses and reduce the whack-a-mole we all have to play. Of course, that would require Ofcom to regulate telecoms, instead of chasing after people because a teenager might see nudity on the internet. (The number of investigations into that is now a factor of thirty (yes 30) higher than investigations into scam callers).
There’s a new ministerial team in place at DSIT. Hopefully some common sense will percolate across the river.
