Such a severe fine comes after a year long investigation finds BT dropped 14,000 emergency calls after a technical fault lasting 11 hours in June last year.
Why such a severe fine?
The large scale of the fine takes into account findings by Ofcom that BT’s disaster recovery platform had neither the capacity, nor the functionality to cope with the level of demand required by a receiver of the 999 incoming calls service.
It also did not have in place sufficient warning systems for assessing and responding to software failures.
The scale of the £17.5 million fine takes into account these factors, alongside the sheer duration of the service outage, and potential for harm to the general public who rely upon the service.
What’s been said…
The watchdog’s director of enforcement, Suzanne Cater, said ““Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms: if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruptions to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.”
BT said it had taken three days to contact each of the callers who had not been connected after what it described as a complex software problem after failing to answer 14,000 calls from 12,392 people.
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For more information on the BT fine read this short article.
