Appropriate mobile services

The growth of content-rich services is changing the way people use telecommunications from mainly verbal to more visual applications – with colour screens, video streaming, picture messaging, internet browsing and TV viewing.

O2 Germany offers all customers five top services, that can be used free of charge. We want enrich our customers lives and provide uncomplicated communication solutions like phone-book back-up; email notification for incoming emails; location based service ‘0179-Taxi’; Music Spy – hear a song and find out all details about it (title, artist, version); and mobile phone finder. 

We have extended our mobile TV trials in to Ireland. UK trials showed a clear consumer demand for the creation of a mobile broadcasting service, surprisingly revealing its use as a back up to TV viewing in the home, as well as its primary use on the move. Trials began in Ireland in early 2007 and we aim to find out more about our customers’ appetite for this service there. Our Mobile TV offer in the Czech Republic is already successful – 16,000 customers are using the service.

However, new forms of content and internet-enabled handsets create channels through which inappropriate material may be distributed to vulnerable groups like children. These include serious threats such as pornography, racism, violence, gaming and illegal gambling.

O2 does not see its role as a moral arbiter. We respect our customers’ wishes and their freedom to decide how they use their mobile phone and what commercial and internet content they access through our network.

To ensure that our customers can enjoy and benefit from our products and services, we try to prevent the distribution of malicious, inappropriate or illegal content. We give each of our businesses the lead role in making sure responsible practices are being applied across our operations as they are each closest to our customers and best placed to respond to people’s needs and concerns.

Industry co-operation

National codes of conduct, the law, and our stakeholder dialogue inform our practices on responsible marketing and the wider challenges of child protection, including cyber-bullying.

We are members of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and sit on its funding council. With other operators, we fund the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB) in the UK, an industry body that classifies commercial content.

The Internet Watch Foundation undertakes to investigate internet sites internationally that contain potentially illegal content, such as child pornography.

All material that is assessed as illegal by the IWF is passed to the police via the National Criminal Intelligence Service. Internet and mobile internet users that become aware of material they believe to be illegal can submit an online report to www.iwf.org.uk.

We signed the Media Literacy Charter in the UK, formed by the British Film Council, in 2006. This commits us to help educate and enlighten our customers about new media and aims to encourage people to get the best from digital technology.

In 2006 O2 Germany joined the German voluntary self-regulation body (FSM). The membership is based on the Code of Practice for mobile operators. FSM operates a website where illegal or harmful web content can be reported.  In 1999 FSM co-funded INHOPE, an international association of internet hotline providers. O2 Germany is a member of the board of FSM.

O2 Ireland is affiliated to the country’s Hotline.ie service, operated by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland and supervised by the Government’s Internet Advisory Board. The main goal of the board is to combat child pornography.

Engaging with stakeholders

We also engage with many stakeholders on how to ensure appropriate mobile services, including Childnet International, the online child safety charity, and the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety.

In the UK we staged an online debate called ‘U TXTing 2 Me?: Young people, mobiles and social networking’. This was open to the public via the internet and was followed by a seminar of invited experts and interested parties.

In 2006 O2 Germany held its ‘Blue Evening’ discussion forum for politicians, opinion leaders, media and subject experts to debate child protection: ‘The Networked World – Who Protects our Children?’

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