Image source, Getty Images
- Author, Michael Race
- Role, Business Journalist, BBC News
BT has been fined £17.5m for a “catastrophic failure” of its emergency call handling service which resulted in thousands of 999 calls not being connected.
The network outage, which lasted more than 10 hours on June 25, resulted in 14,000 failed calls to emergency services.
After an investigation into the company that runs the 999 phone system, regulator Ofcom said the telecoms giant was “ill-prepared” to respond to the problem and “grossly failing in its responsibilities”.
In response, BT admitted it had failed to meet its commitments and said it was “sincerely sorry”.
Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s director of enforcement, said: “Being able to contact emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so if there is disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.”
A BT spokesperson said: “We are very proud to support the national 999 service and recognise the critical importance of our infrastructure.”
Ofcom said the disruption to emergency call handling was caused by an error in a file on a BT server, which meant systems restarted as soon as call handlers received a call.
This led to staff being disconnected and calls being dropped or abandoned when being transferred to emergency services.
An attempt to resolve the issue then failed, Ofcom said, due to human error as instructions on how to resolve such an issue were “poorly documented” and staff were unfamiliar with the process.
BT also provides text relay services for deaf and speech-impaired people, but the outage left these users unable to “make calls, including to friends, family, businesses and services”.
“This put deaf and speech-impaired users at increased risk of harm,” Ofcom said.
An investigation found that the company’s preparedness for such a situation was “inadequate”.
“We found that BT did not have sufficient alert systems in place to deal with this type of incident, nor adequate procedures to quickly assess the severity, impact and likely cause of such an incident or to identify mitigation measures,” Ofcom said.
The regulator added that while the disruption was widespread, emergency services did not report any “serious damage” as a result, but warned that “the potential degree of damage was extremely significant”.
In response to the fine, BT said it accepted Ofcom’s findings and had put measures in place to “prevent this series of events from happening again”.
“While no technology is 100% resilient, we have built a very robust network with multiple layers of protection to connect the public to emergency services when needed,” a spokesperson added.
“We take our responsibility to the emergency services and the public seriously and on this occasion we have failed to meet our own high standards of 999 service.”
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