BT has been issued with a mighty £17.5 million fine by Ofcom for a severe failure in its emergency call handling service which left thousands of 999 calls unconnected.
The network fault on June 25, 2023, disrupted the emergency call system for more than 10 hours, leading to 14,000 calls failing to connect.
Ofcom’s investigation found BT “ill-prepared” and “woefully short of its responsibilities.”
BT fined for 999 failures
Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s Director of Enforcement, noted that the “large-scale outage” had put customers at an “unacceptable risk,” emphasizing the critical nature of the emergency services infrastructure:
“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.”
The first phase of the outage, attributed to a configuration error in a file on its server, left customers without connection to the emergency services for 69 minutes, from 06:24. Human error and unfamiliarity with the recovery process saw phase two last 77 minutes.
From 08:50 to 16:56, disruptions to the service continued, marking a total of more than 10 hours.
Ofcom summarized the results of its investigation: “We found that BT did not have sufficient warning systems in place for when this kind of incident occurs, nor did it have adequate procedures for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions.”
The regulatory and competition authority considered the seriousness, duration and degree of harm, together with BT’s cooperation, when deciding on the £17.5 million fine.
A BT spokesperson commented (via the BBC): “We take great pride in underpinning the national 999 service and recognise the critical importance our infrastructure plays.”
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