We conducted a review of nearly 80,000 anonymous consumer bills, engaging Schiff Consulting to analyse how residential consumers buy and use mobile plans, add-ons and causal rates for data, mins and SMS.
Our 2019 mobile market study concluded that consumers may not compare plans or assess their spend usage very often and that consumers may be unaware if there are other retail offers available that might better meet their needs. We therefore commenced a review of mobile consumer bills under section 9A of the Telecommunications Act 2001, to understand:
the usage and expenditure patterns of residential consumers in the mobile market
the extent to which these consumers could save money by changing their purchasing behaviour.
In April 2021 we published a letter notifying parties of the completion of our review, alongside an update to the report by Schiff Consulting, the independent economic consultant engaged to undertake the analysis for the review, and responses from parties to our September 2020 open letter. We will continue to monitor the MNOs' and TCF's commitments to implement the range of measures to address issues of data transparency and consumer inertia transparency that were set out in our March 2021 open letter and have subsequently issued a further update in May 2022 to request MNOs views on future work in this area.
