Ofcom's Dave Stewart discusses 2009's agent provocateurs

2009 is going to be a year where there is a lot going on. We will see a growth in the industry – more than half of the UK’s voice traffic will come from mobile by 2010.

At the same time there is a lot going on in technology and changes in the way people use services, along with the ongoing growth of mobile broadband – there are about one million subscribers now and it keeps going up, quarter by quarter.

Ofcom is responding to these changing trends to see where it will be for consumers. Economic conditions could mean even more intense competition within mobile, with pressure on the industry to become more efficient in areas such as services.

We measure levels of customer satisfaction. Although we aren’t in any state of crisis in 2009, we will continue to step up our efforts. It’s all about consistency. We are looking at areas that affect consumers directly such as mis-selling or issues when swopping to another network.

On termination rates - we can see action on all fronts. There is an ongoing active and healthy debate taking place in the UK and Europe. There are still issues around roaming, particularly data roaming. The headline we see is our Mobile Sector Assessment. How do we respond to a changing sector?

‘2009 will be a very important year in terms of Ofcom’s projection of mobile issues because of the mobile sector assessment.