Ofcom's own advisory says it is investigating four telecoms providers over scam phone numbers, with no link to show which ones. The regulator's dedicated tally page for that count has not named a new case in a year, and still says two.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In short. Ofcom's 2 October 2026 consumer advisory on "job offer" and missed call scams states plainly: "we are currently investigating four telecoms providers" under its "ongoing programme of work aimed at tackling phone scams and scam mobile messages" [[1]]. The advisory names none of the four and links to none of them. Ofcom's own dedicated page for that programme, last updated 17 October 2025, says: "To date, we have opened two investigations, into Tismi and Primo Dialler" [[2]]. Two further investigations, into Vonage Business Limited and Voxbone SA, did open on 24 September 2026 under the same General Condition [[3]][[4]], which would bring the total to four if counted together. But neither new case page describes itself as part of the programme, the way Primo Dialler's page explicitly does [[5]], and neither has been added to the programme page that is supposed to track them [[2]]. One documented mistake: four stars.
Ofcom published its advisory on "job offer" and missed call scams on 2 October 2026, warning the public about two tactics criminals use to get people on the phone and extract money or personal details. Most of the page is straightforward consumer advice: hang up, do not share details, report the number to 7726. Buried in the middle of it is a sentence of a different kind, a claim about the regulator's own current enforcement activity, stated without a shred of supporting detail.
A number with nothing attached to it
"Ofcom also has an ongoing programme of work aimed at tackling phone scams and scam mobile messages," the advisory says. "We are currently investigating four telecoms providers as part of this" [[1]]. That is the entire sentence. No company is named. No case reference is given. No hyperlink points anywhere, not even to the enforcement programme the sentence itself describes, despite the advisory linking elsewhere in the same paragraph to three separate pages about scam call rules. A reader who wants to check the claim has to go looking for the programme themselves.
The programme's own tally says two
That programme has a dedicated page, opened on 1 February 2024 under case reference CW/01280/01/24, and it is built to answer exactly this question. Its most recent update, dated 17 October 2025, states: "The enforcement programme into scam calls and messages is being extended for a further 6-12 months. To date, we have opened two investigations, into Tismi and Primo Dialler, relating to the potential misuse of numbers. These investigations are ongoing and we will be updating our bulletin pages in due course" [[2]]. The page's own "Related content" section links directly to the Tismi case file [[2]][[6]]. This is the page designed to be the public record of how many investigations the programme has opened. As of its own timestamp, it says two, not four.
Two cases that do not mention the programme
The gap is not unexplained by arithmetic. On 24 September 2026, nearly a year after the programme page's last update, Ofcom opened two further investigations: one into Vonage Business Limited, case reference CW/01355/07/26, over concerns that "telephone numbers Vonage holds are/were being misused, including to facilitate scams" [[3]], and one into Voxbone SA, case reference CW/01357/09/26, over "the potential misuse of numbers allocated to Voxbone" [[4]]. Both cite the same General Condition B1 provisions as Tismi and Primo Dialler. Two old investigations plus two new ones equals four, which is arithmetically consistent with the advisory's claim.
But the two new case pages do not say they belong to the enforcement programme. Primo Dialler's own page, opened 14 April 2025, states explicitly: "This investigation falls under our enforcement programme, launched last year, looking specifically at phone and text scams" [[5]]. Neither the Vonage page nor the Voxbone page carries an equivalent sentence, or any reference to the programme, to Tismi, or to Primo Dialler [[3]][[4]]. A reader following Ofcom's own practice of cross-referencing, set by Primo Dialler's page, would have no way to connect the two newest cases to the programme the advisory cites, or to find them from the programme page at all. The regulator's claim and the regulator's own published record do not join up.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "We are currently investigating four telecoms providers as part of this [programme]" (advisory, 2 October 2026), with no name, case reference or link given [[1]] | The programme's own dedicated page, last updated 17 October 2025, states "we have opened two investigations, into Tismi and Primo Dialler" [[2]]; two further cases opened 24 September 2026 (Vonage [[3]], Voxbone [[4]]) would make four, but neither names the programme and neither appears on the programme page | The total is arithmetically plausible but unverifiable from Ofcom's own published record as it stands |
| Primo Dialler's case page states "this investigation falls under our enforcement programme" [[5]], establishing the practice of cross-referencing | Vonage's and Voxbone's case pages, opened the same day as each other, carry no such line and no link back to the programme or to the earlier two cases [[3]][[4]] | The two newest cases break the pattern the regulator's own earlier pages set, with no explanation given |
Credit where due
Not every figure on the advisory page falls apart under checking. Its claim that "the number of people who report that they have recently received a suspicious call has fallen over the last four years" [[1]] holds up against Ofcom's own published research: 43% of mobile users and 39% of landline users reported a suspicious call in the previous three months in August 2022, against 32% and 39% respectively in Ofcom's most recent tracker. The direction is correctly stated, even if the page does not cite the figures. And the underlying enforcement activity is real: four investigations, however they are currently documented, is four more than none, and the daily-penalty and direction powers Ofcom has used against Tismi show the programme has teeth, not just a case list [[6]].
Verdict
Four stars, from one documented mistake. Ofcom is not wrong that it has four live investigations into telecoms providers connected to scam phone numbers; the arithmetic checks out once every case page is found. The mistake is that the regulator's own published record does not let a member of the public verify that without doing the digging this piece just did, because the one page built to carry that count stopped being updated a year before the number in the advisory changed, and the two cases that account for the difference do not describe themselves as part of the programme at all.
The star score counts one documented mistake. Ofcom's 2 October 2026 advisory states it is "currently investigating four telecoms providers" under its enforcement programme into phone and text scams, but the programme's own dedicated page, last updated 17 October 2025, lists only two investigations (Tismi and Primo Dialler), and the two further investigations that would complete the total (Vonage Business Limited and Voxbone SA, both opened 24 September 2026) do not reference the programme, Tismi or Primo Dialler anywhere on their own case pages, unlike Primo Dialler's page, which explicitly states it falls under the programme. One fall in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This piece makes no finding about the competence of any named Ofcom official; the criticism is of how the regulator's own published pages do, and do not, cross-reference each other, not of any person's conduct. Checked directly against all six Ofcom pages cited below, all fetched 10 October 2026.
Sources
- Beware of 'job offer' and missed call scams, Ofcom, published 2 October 2026
- Enforcement programme into phone and text scams, Ofcom, case reference CW/01280/01/24, published 1 February 2024, last updated 17 October 2025
- Investigation in Vonage Business Ltd's compliance with Ofcom's General Conditions, Ofcom, case reference CW/01355/07/26, published 24 September 2026
- Investigation into Voxbone's compliance with its obligations under the General Conditions of Entitlement (GCs), Ofcom, case reference CW/01357/09/26, published 24 September 2026
- Ofcom launches investigation into telecoms company, Primo Dialler, Ofcom, published 14 April 2025
- Investigation into Tismi's compliance with its obligations under the General Conditions of Entitlement (GCs), Ofcom, published 18 October 2024, last updated 24 June 2025