Ofcom investigates BT and Three for failing to connect 999 calls

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

1000’s of Three prospects reported they were unable to make calls in June, whereas BT and EE prospects have been hit by a similar outage in July.

The regulator mentioned it will study whether or not the cell networks didn’t do sufficient to forestall the issues.

Three mentioned in an announcement 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 attributable to this incident,” they mentioned.

In the meantime, Three mentioned it had “skilled disruption to voice companies 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 line with Ofcom, companies should take correct motion to determine dangers and put together for “something that compromises the supply, efficiency or performance of their community or service”.

It mentioned suppliers should additionally stop “hostile 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 dwelling and out and about.”

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

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

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

This was not remoted to its personal community – it additionally triggered issues for purchasers on networks that piggyback off of Three, similar to ID Cellular.

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 companies are appropriately resilient”.

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

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 related.

Three was ordered to pay £1.9m in 2017 after Ofcom discovered it might have prevented a problem that triggered a lack of service for purchasers a 12 months prior.

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