3 UK has been fined GBP 1.89 million by Ofcom for failure to ensure uninterrupted access to the emergency services. An Ofcom investigation found that the mobile operator broke an important rule designed to ensure everyone can contact the emergency services at all times.
In October 2016, 3 notified Ofcom of a temporary loss of service affecting customers in Kent, Hampshire and parts of London. The regulatory investigation found that emergency calls from customers in the affected area had to pass through a particular data centre in order to reach the emergency services. This meant that the operator’s emergency call service was vulnerable to a single point of failure.
The network should have been able to automatically divert emergency calls via back-up routes in the event of a local outage. But these back-up routes would also have failed because they were all directed through this one point. To resolve the incident and address the underlying network weakness, 3 has added an additional back-up route to carry emergency call traffic.
The breach of the rules was not the incident itself, but rather the weakness identified in 3’s network, Ofcom said. The amount of the fine reflects the seriousness of the breach, given the potential impact on public health and safety. The penalty incorporates a 30 percent reduction to reflect the co-operation offered by 3 during the investigation, including admitting the breaches identified by Ofcom.
3 UK said in a statement that the network vulnerability did not have any impact on customers and only related to a potential failure point. The company said it takes the emergency services requirements "extremely seriously" and took immediate action to resolve the problems.
