United Kingdom: Ofcom fines BT Group for technical fault from last year

UK regulator Ofcom has fined BT Group a fee of £17.5 million ($22.6m) after a technical fault that impacted its ability to handle emergency calls between 06:24 and 16:56 on June 25th, 2023. 
 

 Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s director of enforcement said: "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. In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk. Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms -– if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers." 

A spokesperson also said to the media: "We take great pride in underpinning the national 999 service and recognize the critical importance our infrastructure plays. The level of disruption to the service on Sunday 25 June last year has never been seen before and we are sincerely sorry for the distress caused. We accept the specific points raised in Ofcom’s findings, and have put in place comprehensive measures to prevent this series of events from reoccurring and improve end-to-end resilience of the system as a whole