This is important for us to know that the advertising watchdog in Britain works unlike the Advertising Standards Council of India which is toothless “regulator”. No one gives a fuck to the poor sods who claim “moral high ground”.
It seems like a redundant organization; I have emailed them on previous occasions but to no avail. Till the time it is backed by a proper law, this regulation is useless. For the same reason, it is not fair that people from the same fraternity are asked to draw up legislation that is required to govern them! No wonder, it is going to be pathetic because the law by itself would have enough gaping holes to allow an elephant to pass through.
British Telecom was making fraudulent claims (as per the report) and the other “competitors” crowed and brayed to the council to retract it’s misleading claims. UK has allowed for last mile access which means that both incumbent and the company taking advantage of the same are locked in over the same set of customers. Which ultimately means that although there is a strong incentive for oligopolies, the need to grow their customer base would ultimately make them competitive.
In Indian scenario, these bastards get together on a fancy platform and whine about ‘lack of infrastructure”. Unfortunately, it needs some action of ground. Agreed that the corruption is all time high and that companies have ganged up together to throttle the gateways, still if you create enough demand for your product, there is bound to be growth in business. Mobile telephony did not happen in thin air. Companies promoted it heavily; mobiles have grown to a large extent (although the exact numbers are disputed), a genuine “demand” for SMS was created (although there is next to nothing in that space in terms of applications) and it’s now after a “critical mass” of population, has it become profitable. Although I would still dispute the notion of “cheapest fares” which is essentially crap claim.
The same has to be done for Broadband. UK remains a bad example of telephony regulation. Although it is “developed” but large swathes of this tiny nation are lying in the dark (in terms of broadband coverage). BT has feasted on taxpayers money just like our home grown BSNL. Yet, some of the organs of government DO work there.
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