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The UK communications regulator has fined BT £17.5mn for being “ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call handling service” last year.
Ofcom announced the penalty on Monday after BT experienced a network fault that affected its ability to connect calls to emergency services between 6.24am and 4.56pm on June 25 last year, during which almost 14,000 call attempts were unsuccessful.
BT, which connects 999 and 112 calls in the UK and provides relay services for deaf and speech-impaired people, has received the largest fine Ofcom has given out following a 999 incident.
Suzanne Cater, the watchdog’s director of enforcement, said the FTSE 100 company “fell woefully short of its responsibilities”.
She added: “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.”
Ofcom said there were no confirmed reports by the emergency authorities of serious harm to members of the public as a result of the incident.
BT said the level of disruption to the service last year had “never been seen before and we are sincerely sorry for the distress caused”.
The UK telecoms group accepted the points raised in Ofcom’s findings and said it had “put in place comprehensive measures to prevent this series of events reoccurring and improve end-to-end resilience of the system as a whole”.
BT added: “While no technology is 100 per cent resilient, we have built a highly robust network with multiple layers of protection to connect the public to blue light services in their time of need.”
The watchdog found that BT did not have “sufficient warning systems in place” for when this kind of incident occurred or “adequate procedures” for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions.
Ofcom also found that BT’s disaster recovery platform had “insufficient capacity and functionality” to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected.
The incident also caused disruption to text relay calls, the regulator reported, which meant people with hearing and speech difficulties were unable to make any calls. It said this left deaf and speech-impaired users at increased risk of harm.
BT notified Ofcom and the regulator opened an investigation on June 28 last year. The watchdog added BT had fully co-operated and taken steps to remedy these issues.
Ofcom in 2017 fined KCom, the local operator in Hull, £900,000 after a network failure left customers unable to contact emergency services for four hours.
Three was also previously fined £1.9mn in 2017 after a network fault meant some of its customers were not able to reach emergency services.