I was wandering through the various blogs in the internet and was rather entertained by Anthony's ranksacking of the PhonepayPlus website on Fresh Plastic.
PhonepayPlus is the industry body that regulated phonepaid services int he UK, premium rate phonelines and ringtone pedellers. This we already knew, but what I read up on just now is the way they are funded. They get their money from the service providers and occasionally from fines, this is as opposed to getting direct government funding.
Now Fresh Plastic has it that they're basically an advertising service for the industry rather than a regulator, and it certainly looks like it, but here's my dialema...
Like any business, they work for whoever pays them, so in this case they're not working for consumers, they're working for the providers, hence the advertising, but if they were funded by the consumer, in the form of being funded by the government, they'd be just another of the great army of unelected quangos which need to be doused in petrol, set on fire and left to run down the street begging people to piss them out.
So how should PhonepayPlus be funded?
I dunno, however they're funded now sucks, and being funded by the government would suck.
This is odd though, they seem to change their directors very frequently. Is this normal?
Hey Chris! I'm glad you came across my PhonepayPlus posts and I like the ranksacking phrase (I didn't know that was the name of what I was doing!)
ReplyDeleteSurely PhonepayPlus should be funded by the massive fines imposed on the unethical companies ripping off the consumer.
ReplyDeletePhonepayPlus are clearly just another greedy regulator and want more money, even though they are supposed to be a non profit but strangely have assets of over 1 million pounds. Hmm non profit, doesn't seem so...