Multiparty chat coming back – hmmmmm

Thanks to internet chatrooms, PhonepayPlus is looking again at re-introducing multiparty chat services – ideally with less onerous prior permission and maximum spending caps than it did in 2002 – as it now perceives consumers to be safe to use them.

The services were effectively banned in 2000 because PP (or ICSTIS as it was back then) believed that consumers were too easily addicted to such services and were over-spending. Now, just a decade later, PPP believes that people are so used to internet chat rooms that they can handle multi-party chat once again – which is good of them.

PPP now believes that with the right maximum spending caps and other safe guards, that services can be run. And it wants you, the telemedia industry, to tell it how best to get these dormant services back up and running.

The interesting thing here is that why would anyone now want to run multiparty chat services since, by PPP’s own admission, most people who want to do this kind of thing are doing it largely for free in chatrooms online? Or via the many IM based services now in place? Or the myriad mobile and mobile video services now successfully running? I could go on…

Could this be a case of consumer self-regulation? Is PPP deciding to open up a once profitable service now that it knows that most consumers won’t use it?

That said, the telemedia industry is always good at grabbing an opportunity, so I look forward to seeing more multiparty chat services, via the telephone, hitting the streets in, oh, 2015 once the consultation period has run its course.

If I were to be charitable I could say that PPP is trying to offer some help to the industry in a time of crisis; offering up the possibility of some of the services from the good old days now making a reappearance because consumers are more sophisticated.

But, with virtual chat services effectively being closed down with PPP’s other hand, the cynic in me tends to win out. This is perhaps being reintroduced because no one will bother to use it.

Anyway, the proposal is out there, so go consult.