{"id":13048,"date":"2025-12-15T13:56:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/un-news.org\/ofcom-investigates-bt-and-three-for-999-emergency-call-outage\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T13:56:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:56:19","slug":"ofcom-investigates-bt-and-three-for-999-emergency-call-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/un-news.org\/en\/ofcom-investigates-bt-and-three-for-999-emergency-call-outage\/","title":{"rendered":"Ofcom investigates BT and Three for 999 emergency call outage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UK: Ofcom opens investigation into BT and Three over mobile network outages affecting landline communications<\/p>\n

UN News reports: The British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, announced the opening of a formal investigation into BT and the mobile network company Three, due to alleged widespread service outages that disrupted communications, including emergency services in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Three customers reported that they were unable to make calls in June, while BT and EE mobile network customers were affected by a similar outage in July, according to previous reports.<\/p>\n

Ofcom confirmed that it will focus the investigation on identifying whether the available mobile networks did enough to avoid such problems.<\/p>\n

Three stated in a statement that it is cooperating with Ofcom in the investigation, while a spokesperson for the BT Group expressed the companies’ apologies to the customers affected by those outages.<\/p>\n

“We will fully cooperate with Ofcom throughout the investigation period, and we apologize once again to our customers for any problems caused by this incident,” said the BT spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Three said it “experienced an impact on voice services due to an exceptional spike in network traffic triggered by external software configuration changes.”<\/p>\n

“Following the service outage, we contacted Ofcom openly and will continue to fully cooperate with their investigation,” the company added.<\/p>\n

According to Ofcom, investing companies must take appropriate steps to identify risks and prepare themselves to accommodate “anything that causes a disruption to the availability, efficiency, or functionality of the network.”<\/p>\n

Ofcom indicated that service providers must also work to avoid “any negative impact that may arise from any such disruptions,” stressing that if this occurs, they must take steps to manage them.<\/p>\n

Communications analyst Paolo Pescatore noted that “the importance of connectivity cannot be overstated,” emphasizing that “every one of us requires a strong and reliable connection in our homes and everywhere we go.”<\/p>\n

He added that outages can occur despite the “considerable efforts” made to combat them, but stresses the need for “a straightforward process to identify the problem and learn lessons so it does not repeat itself.”<\/p>\n

Previous Problems<\/p>\n

These incidents are at the heart of Ofcom’s investigation, as thousands of customers on the shared BT and Three networks reported problems with their mobile phone services.<\/p>\n

At the time, Three informed its customers who complained about transmission and reception problems via mobile phone on June 25 that it was experiencing “an issue affecting voice services.”<\/p>\n

The problem was not limited to its own network, but also affected customers on other networks that utilize Three’s networks, such as ID Mobile.<\/p>\n

A month later, EE and BT customers began complaining about similar problems.<\/p>\n

A government spokesperson said at the time that “telecom providers have explicit statutory duties to ensure that their networks and service providers are sufficiently efficient.”<\/p>\n

Service providers have previously faced news reports due to outages or issues causing problems with people’s ability to make calls or contact emergency services.<\/p>\n

BT was fined $\\pounds17.5 \\text{ million}$ in July 2024 for a “catastrophic” failure of its emergency call handling service that affected the accessibility of thousands of 999 calls.<\/p>\n

Three was ordered to pay $\\pounds1.9 \\text{ million}$ in 2017 after Ofcom discovered that it could have prevented a problem that caused its customers to lose service a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Three later merged with Vodafone to become the largest mobile phone network in the UK, with 27 million customers.<\/p>\n

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