Fair point Tevor.  I was constrained really by what you could get into a banner at the bottom of the page.  And as The Sun has long since discovered you have to have something eye catching in the headline to make people bother reading the story.

Perhaps I need to change my banner yet again but at least it refers to a consultation that is open rather than one that closed weeks ago like the consultation reference on the home page of this site.

Coming back to the metering and billing thing I feel rather strongly incensed that Ofcom could even float a consultation that suggests the possibility that the systems of smaller billing providers might be self policing when inevitably these are the very companies most likely to be doing something dodgy.  Although unfortunately the idea that the telecoms industry are all jolly decent chaps who can be trusted to do the right thing by their customers does seem to be a fatal flaw that pervades much of Ofcom's current approach to regulation.  It is also why they continually fail in their main duty to protect the uk citizen consumer.