A member of the ACE team
20 February 2009
Four of us on the Communications Consumer Panel are appointed specifically to represent the individual nations of the UK. I am the member for England and I have colleagues representing Scotland (Fiona Ballantyne), Wales (Kim Brook) and Northern Ireland (Maureen Edmondson).
Each of us sits on the appropriate national Ofcom Advisory Committee so I sit on the Advisory Committee for England which has the wonderful acronym ACE.
Now ACE has not met for over half a year because new members have been being recruited and in fact the new Committee only has one member (Anne Scorer) from the original membership. Ironically the new Committee for England is chaired by an American (Professor Bill Dutton) and its members include a South African and two Scots.
However, each of course resides in England and represents a particular English Region. Between them, they have considerable expertise and knowledge, as was evident at the first meeting of the new Committee held this week in Riverside House.
The agenda for this first meeting was formidable, since it was intended to brief the new members on most of the main issues currently being tackled by Ofcom, so we were advised on Governance, the Consumer Panel, the Content Board, Broadband Speeds, the Ofcom Annual Plan, Access & Inclusion, Digital Britain, Public Service Broadcasting, Radio, Media Literacy, Mobile, Spectrum and Next Generation Access.
After six and a half hours, the Committee members must have been exhausted, but they acquitted themselves admirably and I'm really looking forward to working with them to ensure that the interests of consumers in England - actually 84% of the UK - are well represented.