STEPHEN CARTER has a new gadget. Grinning, he picks up a handset that plugs neatly into his computer allowing him to make free internet calls.

“You don’t have one?” he asks in disbelief. It’s the kind of publicity Skype — the phone’s producer and currently the hottest of the internet call companies — must dream about.

Such shows of boyish excitement are not typical. But Carter, head of Ofcom, the telecoms and media watchdog and one of the most powerful men in Britain, is in a buoyant mood.

The 41-year-old Scot has just completed one of the biggest and most complex tasks since starting at the “super-regulator” two years ago — a review of the £40 billion telecoms industry.

The review, the first in 13 years and the biggest since privatisation 21 years ago, began as a wide-ranging inquiry into everything from mobile roaming charges to “rip off” 0845 numbers. However, the focus shifted quickly to BT, the telecoms giant, and whether it was stifling competition by failing to give rivals fair access to its local network.

Finding a solution that would benefit consumers and end persistent complaints from rivals while not alienating BT (which was threatened with being broken up) was not going to be easy.

But, to Carter’s obvious relief, he found an answer — forcing the former monopoly to carve out a special new division, employing some 30,000 staff, to oversee the local network — which appears to have kept everyone happy.

BT remains whole, its critics have been appeased and consumers have been promised a world of cheaper calls, more competition and a host of new services.

Achieving this outcome was not, concedes Carter, a walk in the park. “Did I lie awake at night? You bet I did. It could have gone terribly wrong,” he says.

He cites the review — along with the review of public service broadcasting he completed earlier this year — as one of his proudest achievements since arriving at the plush riverside offices of Ofcom.

And he gives short shrift to those who say that the new, rather flatly titled “Openreach” division, is the precursor to a fully broken-up BT. “I don’t think it’s productive to go down that route,” he says.

Surveying his “to do” box, it is hardly surprising Carter wants to close the lid on the telecoms review. The switch over from analogue to digital television, a review of advertising and an upcoming auction of new third-generation licences — with all the potential frictions — are just some of the issues he and his team must address.

One prickly issue already firmly on the agenda is that of Europe wanting to begin to regulate the internet — monitoring issues such as decency, accuracy and impartiality.

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