The Radio Authority
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Ofcom offices at Riverside House, Bankside, next to Southwark Bridge
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| Abbreviation | Ofcom |
|---|---|
| Formation | 29 December 2003 |
| Type | Statutory corporation |
| Legal status | Created by Office of Communications Act 2002 |
| Purpose | Regulator and competition authority for broadcasting, postal services, telecommunications and radiocommunications spectrum |
| Headquarters | London, England |
| Location |
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Region served
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United Kingdom |
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Official language
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English, Welsh |
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Chief Executive
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Sharon White |
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Chairman
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Lord Burns |
| Website | ofcom |
The Office of Communications (Welsh: Y Swyddfa Gyfathrebiadau), commonly known as Ofcom, is the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material.
Some of the main areas Ofcom presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio spectrum from abuse (e.g. pirate radio stations).
The regulator was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003.
The creation of Ofcom was announced in the Queen's Speech to the UK Parliament, in June 2001. The new body, which would replace several existing authorities, was conceived as a "super-regulator" to oversee media channels that were rapidly converging through digital transmission. Ofcom launched on 29 December 2003, formally inheriting the duties that had previously been the responsibility of five different regulators:
In July 2009, Conservative party opposition leader David Cameron said in a speech against the proliferation of quangos that:
With a Conservative government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist… Its remit will be restricted to its narrow technical and enforcement roles. It will no longer play a role in making policy. And the policy-making functions it has today will be transferred back fully to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Under Cameron's subsequent premiership of the 2010 UK coalition government, the Public Bodies Act 2011 did remove or modify several of Ofcom's duties, although it did not substantially reduce Ofcom's remit.
On 1 October 2011, Ofcom took over responsibility for regulating the postal services industry from the Postal Services Commission (Postcomm).
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