BT and Three investigated by UK watchdog following outages

Ofcom is investigating telecommunications providers BT and Three following mobile network outages that failed to connect calls to emergency services.

BT and Three, two major telecommunications providers in the UK, are being investigated by Ofcom, the UK’s communications watchdog, after the mobile operators failed to connect calls across the nation during a summer outage.

BT notified the watchdog of disruptions to mobile call services on its EE network on July 24th and 25th, 2025, which resulted in customers being unable to make or receive calls to other networks, including emergency services.

Three also notified Ofcom of an incident that caused UK-wide disruptions to its call service on June 25th, 2025. Three customers were also unable to contact emergency services in the UK.

“Mobile operators are required to take appropriate and proportionate measures to identify and reduce the risks and prepare for the occurrence of anything that compromises the availability, performance, or functionality of their network or service,” Ofcom said in a statement on its website.

Telecom operators like BT and Three are also responsible for preventing the adverse effects that come from any compromises, while also taking steps to mitigate and remedy any issues that arise.

If any compromises arise, telecom companies like BT and Three are required to report outages to Ofcom above certain thresholds.

“Our investigations will seek to establish the facts surrounding these incidents and assess whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that BT and Three have failed to comply with their regulatory obligations.”

BT was fined over $23 million in 2024 due to a “catastrophic failure” in its emergency call handling, which meant that thousands of 999 calls couldn’t be connected, the BBC reports.

Three was also previously fined over $2.5 million in 2017 after Ofcom discovered that a preventable issue caused services to go offline for its customers.

The BT group has over 25 million customers in the UK, and Three, which has just merged with Vodafone, has 27 million customers, making it the UK’s largest mobile network provider.

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