Ofcom challenges providers to protect out-of-contract customers
A number of UK providers have agreed to commitments protecting customers
Paul Lipscombe
September 25, 2019
The network’s outage left some being unable to contact emergency services
BT are under investigation after a power outage from earlier this year. The UK’s communication regulator Ofcom is investigating whether BT complied with its obligations under section 105A(4) of the Communications Act 2003. This section of the act requires a network provider to “take all appropriate steps to protect, so far possible the availability of the provider’s public electronic communications network”.
Services went down on 21 May, leaving customers unable to access emergency services. This was a day before the company’s planned rollout for 5G services in six British cities although a spokesperson for the company said these issues were not related in any way.
Another EE spokesperson told Mobile News: “We’re fully cooperating with Ofcom in its investigation after an issue on our network affected calls made over 4G on May 21st 2019, this was due to a technical error that was corrected and restored as quickly as possible. We’ve already taken proactive steps to update our processes based on lessons learnt to help prevent this from happening again, and apologise again to our customers for the inconvenience this issue caused.”