When have you ever heard of operators crying out for legislation? British mobile operators asked parliament today to give them clearer guidelines—to the point of legislating it into law--on what constituted unsuitable content in order to better prevent children from accessing it.

The Guardian reports that executives from the UK’s top five networks, giving evidence at a Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said for now, the best they could do was offer voluntary filters on handsets that blocked “unsuitable” content, that technically, wasn’t actually illegal. O2’s head of public affairs Steven Bartholomew told the Guardian, “If content is legal but unpalatable it’s up to parliament to change the definition and that would give us legal certainty to take action against that kind of content.” Hamish MacLeod, the chair of the Mobile Broadband Group, which represents the operators, reported that the Home Office and Ofcom were launching a British Standards Institute “kitemark” for filter systems designed to give parents a better understanding of what the technology could and could not do.

Operators also couldn’t resist a swipe at handset manufacturers. They too, the operators charged, needed to take more responsibility on protecting children from inappropriate content. T-Mobile head of content regulation Juliet Kramer noted that as more manufacturers—(are you listening Nokia?)—embed content directly into devices, unsuitable content may well make it past parental controls.

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