UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) has imposed a penalty of £17.5m on British telecommunications company BT Group over the failure of its emergency call handling service.
BT Group handles 999 and 112 emergency calls in the UK and offers relay services for people who are hearing or speech impaired.
In June last year, a network fault disrupted the British company’s ability to connect emergency calls between 06:24 and 16:56, affecting nearly 14,000 call attempts from 12,392 callers.
BT Group informed Ofcom of the issue, and an investigation was launched on 28 June 2024 to determine if the company had failed to comply with its legal duties to prepare for potential network disruptions.
In its probe, the British government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries found that BT Group lacked adequate warning systems.
The authority also noted that the company did not have proper procedures for quickly assessing the severity, impact, and likely cause of incidents, nor for identifying necessary mitigation measures.
Additionally, Ofcom discovered that BT Group’s disaster recovery platform was insufficiently equipped to handle a level of demand that could reasonably be expected.
The incident also disrupted text relay calls, preventing people with hearing and speech difficulties from making any calls, including to friends, family, businesses, and services. This exposed hearing and speech-impaired users at an increased risk of harm.
Ofcom Director of Enforcement Suzanne Cater said: “Being able to contact the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.
“In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk.”
Ofcom also said that it has reviewed the measures BT Group has implemented to address the issues.
It includes correcting the error that caused the disruption, enhancing fault monitoring, upgrading the disaster recovery platform, and establishing a clear process for activating it.
Furthermore, BT Group self-reported the incident as required, provided regular updates, and fully cooperated with the investigation by supplying requested information promptly, said the regulator.
Earlier in May this year, Ofcom fined BT Group £2.8m for failing to provide over a million customers with clear and simple contract information before they signed up for a new deal.
The company allegedly breached consumer protection rules intended to ensure that telecoms customers receive transparent and comparable data about the services they are considering purchasing.
