a few Ofcom fails from memory, and a number porting win (and fail for A1 and Austria)

 Around 2011, I went to a talk in Oxford by a former head of Ofcom.  The surprising thing about the talk was the self-congratulatory framing.  This former head of Ofcom had no idea how incompetent they were, and was simply putting things in terms of presumed success.

Several of their fails mysteriously allowed scammers to scam via premium lines; in other words, the organisation was corrupt and captured.

Instead of allocating 07 to mobiles, they allocated loads of 07blahs to mobiles, but 070 or something was called "personal numbers", which were actually premium lines where a juicy cut went to the number operator.

They then allowed a situation to develop and fester with so-called "local rate" and "national rate" numbers.  In both cases, these were premium-rate numbers under prefixes like 0845 and 0870, where, again, cuts went to the number operator.  Phone networks were under no obligation to charge the same as for local or national geographic numbers.  A customer might pay 1p a minute to 01865, a geographic code, and 5p a minute to 0845, named "local rate".

Ofcom then endorsed the incorrect advertising of internet connections as "unlimited" when they weren't unlimited, and as "fibre" when they weren't fibre.

Instead of facilitating commerce by enforcing honesty, as a regulator should do, Ofcom has consistently taken the side of scammers, because they are corrupt.

I see Ofcom have recently done something good.  Customers wanting to port a number just have to text "PAC" to 65075, a standard short number across networks. If this works, it saves tedious failed to attempts to get PACs on unanswered customer support calls, or in shops that won't do it.  If this actually works, it makes the UK slightly less shit in this respect than Austria, where it is not possible to get a porting code / PAC in the shop (they try and "can't"), or with a call (the customer support line is simply not answered) from A1, the largest provider.