Tismi BV, a telco licensed to operate in eight European countries, has been fined GBP437,500 (USD585,000) by Ofcom, the UK regulator, for “failing to take appropriate and proportionate steps to ensure allocated numbers were not misused, including to perpetrate scams”. Around 366,000 UK phone numbers were sub-allocated by Tismi between November 2022 and January 2025 without adequate due diligence of customers and without adequate monitoring of how those numbers were used in practice. Tismi also lacked formal processes to handle the reports of number misuse they received.
Tismi is headquartered in the Netherlands and is a subsidiary of LINK Mobility, the Norwegian firm which describes itself as the largest Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider in Europe. LINK Mobility bought Tismi in 2021 through a cash and stock deal that valued their acquisition at EUR20mn (USD22.4mn).
Ofcom’s announcement provided no specific details about Tismi’s failings. The official wording of the regulatory decision concluded with a note saying:
To protect the integrity of other on-going investigations, a non-confidential version of the Confirmation Decision will not be published until a later date.
Commsrisk recently reported on Ofcom’s new investigation into lax know-your-customer (KYC) controls and the potential supply of phone numbers to scammers by cloud comms providers belonging to Bandwidth and Ericsson. This significant fine for Tismi is another indication that the UK’s comms regulator is stepping up the enforcement of number supply rules for those cloud comms businesses which enable scammers. The formal decision about Tismi states:
