James Ashton: The hefty workload facing Ofcom in 2016

One route would be to ring-fence some of Britain’s airwaves for the benefit of a fourth, smaller operator.

If that was TalkTalk, it would have to do better in proving it can keep its customers’ data safely under lock and key.

Ofcom is also taking a fresh look at Royal Mail, particularly in light of the troubles experienced by rival delivery firm Whistl last year.

Surely not another opportunity to hike stamp prices? Shares in the company would not have raced so high without a lenient regulatory environment. But despite the decline in letter volumes, it is politically too soon to let the postman reduce his rounds to anything less than six days a week.

Then there is the BBC. Very soon, former Prudential chairman Sir David Clementi will unveil his thoughts on how the corporation should be regulated once the BBC Trust turns to dust a year from now.

The Beeb’s critics would rather the job was bundled into Ofcom, as if that swept away the broadcaster’s “special” status once and for all.

More likely, the BBC will get a unitary board with a strong chairman to hold director-general Tony Hall’s feet to the fire, with issues of bias and impartiality left to Ofcom, which already monitors its output for decency. There are problems, not least the volume of work the BBC creates. And Ofcom’s scope is different to the Trust, which regulates the BBC’s online content, not an area into which Ofcom regularly strays. Does that mean the BBC would enjoy a lighter touch under Ofcom?

I wonder if White’s biggest challenge for 2016 has not even emerged yet. Now that Rupert Murdoch has been informed his newspaper empire will face no further charges over the phone hacking scandal, the way is clear to carry on where he left off five years ago.

After entertaining David Cameron and George Osborne at his Christmas soirée, don’t be surprised if the mogul again tries to acquire the shares in Sky his company doesn’t already own.

Ofcom’s role last time was assessing whether the integration of Sky with News Corp’s newspapers would create a giant that reduced “media plurality” in Britain.

It ruled that it would, but the then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was happy for the takeover to proceed with some remedies.

What is different now is that Sky has grown into a business that operates across Europe. More importantly, the acquiring company would be 21st Century Fox, so Sky would technically come no closer to Murdoch’s newspaper assets because they have been demerged into a separate entity. So does the plurality problem still apply?

Don’t book that summer break yet, Ms White.