£17.5m fine for BT over emergency call failures

REGULATORS slapped a £17.5 million fine on BT today over unprecedented disruption to the 999 and 112 emergency numbers last summer, saying customers were put at “unacceptable risk”.

- Michael Hunter

Ofcom revealed the full extent of the problem for the first time via the results of a detailed investigation into what could have been a “life-and-death” matter.

It said BT was “ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure” which struck on Sunday, 25 June 2023 and ended up lasting for almost 11 hours.

The investigation found that “a network fault” meant nearly 14,000 call attempts made by 12,392 different callers were unsuccessful. The outage ran from 6.24am to 4.56pm.

Ofcom’s director of enforcement, Suzanne Carter, said: “BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a largescale outage.

“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.