Ofcom investigates BT and Three over July service outages

 BT and Three are under investigation by Ofcom following summer outages that disrupted mobile and emergency services connections,

Under licence rules. mobile operators must identify and reduce the risks of anything that compromises their network or service. 

They must also prevent adverse effects arising from down incidents and take measures to remedy or mitigate the problem. They must also report outages to Ofcom above certain thresholds. 

BT has notified Ofcom of a software issue that resulted in national disruption to mobile call services interconnecting to and from the EE network on 24 and 25 July. BT and EE customers being unable to make or receive calls to other networks and emergency services.

 Three has notified Ofcom of an incident that resulted in a natuoinal disruption to call services on 25 June including customers’ ability to contact emergency services. 

Ofcom saays its investigations establish the facts surrounding these incidents and asses whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that BT and Three failed to comply with regulatory obligations.