Ofcom fines BT £17.5 million for 999 call-handling failures

On Sunday 25 June last year, BT experienced a network fault that affected its ability to connect calls to the Emergency Services (including the Fire and Rescue Services) between 06.24 and 16.56. During the incident, nearly 14,000 call attempts – from 12,392 different callers – were unsuccessful.

As required by law, BT notified Ofcom of this issue and. on 28 June, Ofcom opened an investigation to establish whether or not the company had failed to comply with its legal duties to take appropriate and proportionate measures to prepare for potential disruption to its network.

There were three key stages to this incident:

Phase 1 (06.24 to 07.33)

During the first hour, BT’s emergency call handling system was disrupted by what was later found to be a configuration error in a file on its server. This resulted in call handling agents’ systems restarting as soon as a call was received, agents being logged out of the system, calls being disconnected or dropped upon transfer to the emergency authorities and calls being put back in the queue.

BT was initially unable to determine the cause of the issue and attempted to switch to its disaster recovery platform.

Phase 2 (07.33 to 08.50)

The first attempt to switch to the disaster recovery platform was unsuccessful due to human error. This was a result of instructions being poorly documented, and members of the team being unfamiliar with the process. The incident grew from affecting some calls to a total outage of the system.

Phase 3 (08.50 to 16.56)

The rate of unsuccessful calls decreased once traffic was migrated successfully to the disaster recovery platform. However, usual service was not fully restored initially as the disaster recovery platform struggled with demand.

Inadequate preparedness

Ofcom’s investigation 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.

Further, Ofcom 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 incident also realised disruption to text relay calls, which meant that those individuals with hearing and/or speech difficulties were unable to make any calls, including to friends, family, businesses and services. This left deaf and speech-impaired users at an increased risk of harm.

Financial penalty

BT is a large, well-resourced and experienced communications provider. Although there have been no confirmed reports by the emergency authorities of serious harm to members of the public as a result of the incident, the potential degree of harm was extremely significant.

As a result of BT’s failures, Ofcom decided to fine the company the sum of £17,500,000.

Suzanne Cater, director of enforcement at Ofcom, noted: “Being able to contact the Emergency Services can mean the difference between life and death. That being so, in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.”

Cater added: “In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, in turn putting its customers at an unacceptable risk.”

According to Cater: “The fine sends a broader warning to all firms: if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, Ofcom will hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.”

Remedying the issues

In considering the level of the financial penalty, Ofcom took into account factors such as the seriousness, duration and degree of harm. The regulator also considered steps BT has taken to remedy these issues, including fixing the error that caused the disruption, making improvements to fault monitoring, improving the disaster recovery platform and, what’s more, documenting a clear process for switching to it.

Ofcom also recognised the fact that BT self-reported the incident in line with its obligations and also provided regular updates.

BT has also co-operated fully with Ofcom’s investigation and provided the regulator with information in a timely manner when requested.