22nd Jul 2024 09:21
(Alliance News) - BT Group PLC was "ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call handling service last summer," the UK telecommunications industry regulator said on Monday, as it slapped a GBP17.5 million fine on the FTSE 100 company.
BT, which connects emergency calls in the UK, suffered a network fault in June 2023. This affected its ability to connect calls to emergency services from just after 0600 in the morning on June 25 to around 1700 in the early evening.
"During the incident, nearly 14,000 call attempts - from 12,392 different callers - were unsuccessful," Ofcom said.
Ofcom fined BT GBP17.5 million as result.
"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," Ofcom said.
"We also found that BT's disaster recovery platform had insufficient capacity and functionality to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected."
The regulator added: "The incident also caused disruption to text relay calls, which meant people with hearing and speech difficulties were unable to make any calls, including to friends, family, businesses and services. This left deaf and speech-impaired users at increased risk of harm."
BT notified Ofcom of the issue, and the regulator then opened an investigation of the outage.
"In considering the level of financial penalty, we took into account factors such as the seriousness, duration and degree of harm. We also considered steps BT has taken to remedy these issues," Ofcom said. It noted that BT self-reported the incident, provided regular updates, and fully cooperated in the investigation.
BT shares were down 0.5% to 141.15 pence early Monday in London.
By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor
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