Three fined by Ofcom for failure of emergency communications

On 16 June 2017 Ofcom issued mobile network operator Three with a £1,890,000 fine, following an investigation into breach of one of Ofcom's General Conditions of Entitlement that communications providers have to comply with in the UK (General Condition  3.1(c)). The rule is designed to ensure everyone is able to contact the emergency services at all time. It requires communications providers to take all necessary measures to maintain, to the greatest extent possible, uninterrupted access to emergency organisations as part of any publicly available telephone service offered. 

Ofcom found that Three breached this rule following a temporary loss of service on 6 October 2016 affecting customers in Kent, Hampshire and parts of London. During the outage, calls from customers in these areas had to pass through a particular data centre to reach the emergency services, leaving the network vulnerable to a single point of failure.  The investigation found that customers' emergency calls in the affected area had to pass through a particular data centre to reach the emergency services. Three's emergency call centre was therefore vulnerable to a single point of failure. The communications provider's network should have been able to automatically divert emergency calls via back up routes if there was a local outage. But these back up routes failed because they were all directed to one point.

Ofcom determined that Three breached the General Condition, not due to the incident itself, but from the weakness identified in Three's network as a result of the incident.  The level of fine imposed reflects the seriousness of the beach, given the potential impact on public health and safety.

Click here to read Ofcom's press release.