"The Times May 26, 2006


Ofcom's chief executive is poised for departure
By Amanda Andrews and Dan Sabbagh



OFCOM will announce today that Stephen Carter, its chief executive, will be leaving the communications regulator, The Times has learnt.
Mr Carter, who has been at Ofcom since February 2003, is set to leave in the autumn. It is understood that, as part of Mr Carter’s contract, he is not permitted to seek further employment while still at Ofcom.



It is understood that Mr Carter, who was previously chief operating officer of NTL, the cable company, he is keen to move back into the commercial world.

It is not known who will replace Mr Carter, and last night the regulator refused to comment on whether he would be leaving and who would replace him. Ed Richards, the former Downing Street policy adviser who is, in effect Mr Carter’s deputy at Ofcom, was recently sent on the obligatory Harvard management course.

Before coming to Ofcom, Mr Carter, 42, was at NTL from 2001 and led the company when it was facing financial difficulties. He had joined NTL from J Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, for which he worked for much of the 1990s.

Mr Carter is younger and wealthier than most regulators, having left NTL with a payoff and bonus of £1.6 million. His salary at Ofcom is believed to be in the region of £400,000.

While on the whole Ofcom has been viewed as a success and won acclaim for how quickly it got down to business, critics have questioned its fashionable, Central London headquarters and the salaries paid to its executives.

Some have questioned how much cheaper the combined communications regulator is compared with separate telecoms and media regulators.

Mr Carter, a Scot, is chairman of the Marketing Group of Great Britain, a non-executive director of Travis Perkins, a governor of Ashridge Business School and a vice-president of Unicef UK. "

gdh82 wrote on May 26^th, 2006 at 8:43am:
Ofcom is a combined regulator and that press report indicates they are cheaper than when they were separate albeit questions over the salaries and their offices.

Ofcom comprises of the old Oftel, Radio Standards Authority and probably a few more but I can't remember.  Can anyone else remember?

I find it interesting that Carter quits only two days after I copied him in on an email to ITV's Chief Executive complaining about their disgraceful The Mint program being shown on ITV1 as an example of uk broadcasting going down the tubes under the Carter and Currie regime of so called regulation!  I did say god help the uk broadcasting and telecoms industries if Carter and Currie were still in control in another five years time.

Of course I'm sure this is entirely coincidental......................................

bbb_uk wrote on May 26^th, 2006 at 1:58pm:


What's the betting he has already been offered his next job before he decided to quit on an "unofficial" basis.

I expect CEO of CarPhone Warehouse/TalkTalk or a large mobile phone company would suit Mr Carter nicely.  No douby they will appreciate his stout defence of most 084/7 NGN profits.

Of course it may be that the number of MPs now taking an inconvenient interest in Ofcom's approach has encouraged the government to suggest to Mr Carter that a rapid return to the commercial sector may be in order before he is pushed.

Tanllan wrote on May 26^th, 2006 at 2:57pm:


I suspect he is still a bit young for the knighthood and blue sky kind of thing.

I get the feeling he wants to move back to some large telco without a conscience running lots of profitable schemes involving Non Geographic and Premium Rate numbers.  No doubt he will be much in demand given that any company employing him will be sure that Carter will be able to oil the right wheels at Ofcom over any more contentious or close to the wind commercial ideas that they may have in mind.

Say hang on a minute hasn't Ben Verwaayen been CEO of BT for a very, very long time now.  Something tells me that this is where Stephen Carter may very well probably next turn up.  After all what commercial company could put greater value on having friends in high places at the telecoms regulator than good old big blue BT?

I think a similar point has been made before, perhaps by NGM, but the figures below, regarding operating budgets for the FCC (the US regulator, population of country around 300,000,000) and Ofcom (UK regulator, country population around 60,000,000) are quite revealing:

http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/fcc2005budget_main.pdf

In order to attain the goals set forth in our Strategic Plan and implement
the FY 2005 Performance Budget, the Federal Communications
Commission ("FCC") is requesting an FY 2005 appropriation of

$292,958,000

.

We project the FCC will work 2,015 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in FY 2005.

The Commission will use the FY 2005 funds to carry out its fundamental
mission to implement the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, in
a manner that promotes the availability, at reasonable costs and without
discrimination, rapid, efficient, Nation-and world-wide communications
services whether by radio, television, wire, satellite, or cable, for the
American people.


http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/accoun/reports_plans/annrep0405/0405c.pdf

2005/6 budget

Ofcom's Operating Budget for 2005/6 is £133.0m.
[This equates to a dollar equivalent, @ 1GBP=1.87205USD of

$248,982,650

] ⁽¹⁾

This is five per cent lower than the 2004/5 budget (eight per cent lower in real terms compared with the 2004/5
Operating Budget plus RPI).

Recognising the impact of the rephasing projects and of projected RPI increases in 2005/6, Ofcom believes
that the £133.0m operating budget is a prudent figure.


⁽¹⁾ Today's exchange rate according to the BBC Market Data

kk wrote on Jun 1^st, 2006 at 11:49am:

And '070' (as used by Patientline) - which are covert rip-off devious disguised premium rate.

pw4 wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2006 at 6:56pm:


Ofcom is bigger and more costly than any of its predecessors combined yet massively less effective, especially in terms of protecting the rights of the uk citizen consumer?

Its strange that it takes so many overpaid employees simply for Ofcom to decide to no longer to carry out any effective or significant form of regulation of uk telecoms and broadcasting companies