Ofcom's newly released work programme is a plan designed for the next two years (2018 and 2019) to improve general networking within the UK.

That's the gist of it basically, OfCom has several goals under its checklist for this programme and it's quite committed to successfully achieving them.

Most UK networks are expected to see improvements to their capabilities and capacities, varying from minor to significant improvement.

The main goals of the plan involve bettering providers' services through the encouragement of competition, raising and enforcing standards to ensure a quality experience for the customer, widening support reaches for everyone within the UK, put in place consumer-friendly laws, broadcasting content that is regulated and safe for the intended audience and expansion of coverage to allow for remote and rural areas connection.

The splitting of BT and Openreach companies

Ofcom will be closely monitoring the proceedings of the separation between BT and Openreach, the case is of high priority to Ofcom and UK network providers in general.

It's imperative that Ofcom provides updates to the public as well as classified information to network providers.

BT and OpenReach have been one for many years but soon, BT will be split from Openreach and both entirely independent companies as a result. This includes network infrastructure such as towers, lines, equipment and so on.

This is a huge deal for the industry within UK and a major slice of history about to happen. Ofcom staff assure on their website that they will inform everyone of the progress and eventual result.

Airwaves to improve mobile network capacities

Ofcom has airwaves in storage that they plan on releasing in line with the work programme to strengthen mobile networks.

The benefits will include increased coverage for remote and rural areas, stronger tower signals, faster speeds and larger capacities for the amount of users that can be connected at a single time.

The improvement of mobile networks has been on Ofcom's to-do list for a long time and it looks like it'll finally be taking action in 2018/2019. In addition, Ofcom will be looking for companies to invest in 5G and fibre networks for better connections.

Encouragement of competition among providers

Competition is known to push companies to provide better services than their counterparts to satisfy customer desires, the customer is the greatest beneficiary of this newfound tactic. They'll get companies competing for their loyalty by offering deals of great value and ones that are hard to pass up. This is well played on Ofcom's part.

Implementation of high standards

Ofcom plans to implement high standards for providers to use as a guide to follow, this will be a guarantee of quality for the customer.

Current standards are quite high according to OfCom but future standards will be of a much higher level, hopefully boosting providers' services in the process.

BBC will be one of the first recepitants of these standards and their performance assessed against it, it will be interesting to see how the BBC measures up and will likely be used as a guide throughout the years for network companies.

Diversity is another issue set to be addressed by Ofcom, it will be analysing the amount of opportunities provided to people from different backgrounds. This will paint a picture on the current broadcasting and network industry demographically.

Consumer-friendly practices

Ofcom plans on enforcing rules that ensure customers are well treated by communication companies, any harmful practices will be dealt with swiftly and fairly under new work programme rule.

These can result in fines to the acting company and a thorough review of their consumer policies. There is also a plan to make networks situated in buildings silent and reliable, another assurance of quality for the customer.

Investigation into the sudden increase of 118 call charges

118 numbers have seen a drastic increase to their costs over the past few months, this has caused public and media outcry.

Ofcom has vowed to remedy the issue in the upcoming year and review the entire call directory. These unexpected increases have made calling some facilities a very expensive endeavour for UK residents, change is much needed for this specific issue.

Overall, the succession of the work programme should bring about many improvements within the UK networking industry. It should be a smooth-running process if everything goes to plan, and changes are expected to occur within the next two years.

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