I thought I’d use the blog to raise awareness of a few things on the regulation side of the industry. PhonepayPlus (formerly ICSTIS) have just launched their 2008-09 annual plan.
It makes interesting reading and in particular I note the increasing use of the term “Phone-Paid” as opposed to premium. In fact the number of times “Phone-Paid” is used in the report numbers 14, this compares to only 7 for the word “Premium”. This shift is clearly consistent with previous mutterings I’ve heard that they wish to shift consumer perception away from mobile billing being a premium service to being just another way to pay for things. I can’t say I disagree, in fact if it does happen and this helps increase consumer confidence in the mechanism then this can only be a good thing for the industry. The other thing I wanted to bring to your attention is a decent website phonebrain.org.uk. It’s run by PhonepayPlus and despite being aimed at Children I can’t help but feel the way it describes premium rate, excuse me, Phone-Paid, services is one of the most concise and easy to understand I’ve ever seen, my only criticism is it doesn’t highlight how easy it is to terminate subscriptions by simply texting STOP to the shortcode.