The government asks a lot of mobile phone companies and the people who use their services. It asks that certain regulations be followed when a customer wants to transfer from one mobile service to another. It creates laws to protect people from the misuse of mobile phones (such as cell phone driving laws). And now it’s asking the mobile industry to step up and to do its part to fight the problem of prostitution in London.

If you’ve ever been without your own phone in London then you might have stepped in to one of the city’s phone booths to place a call. Once you were in there, you probably saw a handful of sex calling cards which advertise the phone numbers of prostitutes for hire. London’s deputy mayor for policing, Kit Malthouse, has been trying since 2000 to get these cards off of the streets in an effort to reduce the problem of prostitution. It’s illegal to place the cards in the booths, of course, but unless the person doing so is caught there’s not a lot to be done to stop them.

So, the government is asking for a new approach to make it less likely that people will use these cards to get the services of prostitutes. Most, if not all, of the numbers advertised on these cards belong to mobile phones owned either by the prostitute or her pimp. The government is now asking all of the mobile phone carriers to do their part to start banning these numbers from service. He’s invited the leaders of Vodafone, Orange, O2, 3, Virgin and T-Mobile to a meeting at City Hall in October to further discuss this issue. His hope is that the companies and the government can agree at that time on  developing a streamlined plan for banning the numbers associated with the cards.