Ofcom investigates BT and Three for failing to connect 999 calls

Ofcom is investigating BT and Three over cell outages it mentioned had brought on “UK-wide disruption”, together with to emergency providers.

Hundreds of Three prospects reported they were unable to make calls in June, whereas BT and EE prospects had been hit by a similar outage in July.

The regulator mentioned it could look at whether or not the cell networks didn’t do sufficient to forestall the issues.

Three mentioned in a press release it was participating with Ofcom. A BT Group spokesperson apologised to prospects who had been affected.

“We are going to co-operate absolutely with Ofcom all through the investigation and apologise once more for any points brought on by this incident,” they mentioned.

In the meantime, Three mentioned it had “skilled disruption to voice providers following an distinctive spike in community visitors triggered by a third-party software program configuration change”.

“Because the outage, we now have engaged brazenly with Ofcom and can proceed to cooperate absolutely with their investigation,” it mentioned.

In response to Ofcom, corporations should take correct motion to establish dangers and put together for “something that compromises the provision, efficiency or performance of their community or service”.

It mentioned suppliers should additionally forestall “opposed results arising from any such compromises” – saying the place this occurs, they have to take steps to mitigate them.

“The significance of connectivity can’t be underestimated,” mentioned telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore.

“All of us demand a strong and dependable connection at house and out and about.”

He mentioned outages can happen regardless of “important efforts” to forestall them – however mentioned there should be “an easy course of to establish the problem and to study classes so it doesn’t occur once more”.

The incidents on the coronary heart of Ofcom’s investigation noticed hundreds of consumers throughout BT and Three networks report issues with their cell service.

On the time, Three informed prospects complaining of points making and receiving calls on 25 June it was experiencing “a problem affecting voice providers”.

This was not remoted to its personal community – it additionally brought on issues for patrons on networks that piggyback off of Three, equivalent to ID Cell.

A month later, EE and BT prospects complained of comparable points.

A authorities spokesperson mentioned on the time “communications suppliers have statutory obligations to make sure their networks and providers are appropriately resilient”.

Operators have beforehand confronted scrutiny over outages or points affecting peoples’ capability to make calls or contact emergency providers.

BT was fined £17.5m in July 2024 for a “catastrophic failure” of its emergency name dealing with service which led to hundreds of 999 calls not being linked.

Three was ordered to pay £1.9m in 2017 after Ofcom discovered it might have prevented a problem that brought on a lack of service for patrons a yr prior.

It has since merged with Vodafone to kind the UK’s largest cell community, with 27 million prospects.