The national regulator, Ofcom, has this morning hit BT with a fine of £17.5m for being “ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call handling service last summer” (here), which readers may recall occurred after a technical fault (“complex software issue”) resulted in 14,000 emergency calls being disrupted. The disruption lasted for 10.5 hours.

Just to recap. BT previously revealed that a software bug had caused a “caching issue“, which resulted in impacted calls (i.e. those made to both 999 and 112) not being routed correctly and the user’s call being disconnected. At the time, a “robust temporary fix” was put in place to rectify this, and they’ve since implemented something more permanent.

The incident, the first in nearly 90 years, has already sparked the introduction of further safeguards to help “bolster the resilience” of the 999 emergency call handling system (here). But Ofcom has also continued to conduct its own investigation, which has now concluded.

According to the regulator, on Sunday 25th June 2023, BT experienced a network fault that affected its ability to connect calls to emergency services between 06:24 and 16:56. During the incident, nearly 14,000 call attempts – from 12,392 different callers – were unsuccessful.

The Three Stages of BT’s 999 Fault

Phase 1, from 06:24 to 07:33
During the first hour, BT’s emergency call handling system was disrupted by what was later found to be a configuration error in a file on its server. This resulted in call handling agents’ systems restarting as soon as a call was received; agents being logged out of the system; calls being disconnected or dropped upon transfer to the emergency authorities; and calls being put back in the queue. BT was initially unable to determine the cause of the issue and attempted to switch to its disaster recovery platform.

Phase 2, from 07:33 to 08:50
The first attempt to switch to the disaster recovery platform was unsuccessful due to human error. This was a result of instructions being poorly documented, and the team being unfamiliar with the process. The incident grew from affecting some calls to a total outage of the system.

Phase 3, from 08:50 to 16:56
The rate of unsuccessful calls decreased once traffic was migrated successfully to the disaster recovery platform. However, usual service was not fully restored initially as the disaster recovery platform struggled with demand.

Ofcom’s investigation found that BT “did not have sufficient warning systems in place” for such incidents, “nor did it have adequate procedures for promptly assessing the severity, impact and likely cause of any such incident or for identifying mitigating actions“. The regulator also found that BT’s “disaster recovery platform had insufficient capacity and functionality” to deal with a level of demand that might reasonably be expected.

The incident also caused disruption to text relay calls, which meant people with hearing and speech difficulties were unable to make any calls, including to friends, family, businesses and services. This left deaf and speech-impaired users at increased risk of harm.

Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s Director of Enforcement, said:

“Being able to contact the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.

In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large-scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk.

Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms -– if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruption to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.”

Despite the fact that no confirmed cases of “serious harm” have been identified as a result of the incident, Ofcom correctly makes clear that the potential degree of harm was still “extremely significant” and hence the large fine. The fine includes a 30% reduction as a result of BT’s admission of liability, full cooperation, willingness to engage, system improvements, regular updates and agreement to settle the case.

BT now has two months to pay the fine, which will then be passed on to HM Treasury. But the hope is that something like this will never happen again. We have contacted BT for a comment.

The States of Guernsey, which is the government for the English Channel Island of Guernsey, have moved to improve and simplify the handling of consumer broadband, phone and mobile complaints by adjusting their rules to make clear that the States of Guernsey’s Trading Standards Service (TSS) will be the main body for handling such things.

Just to recap. The local government gave telecoms consumers new rights last year, which formally recognised TSS as the body responsible for consumer protection (ombudsman). But there was still somewhat of a legacy division of legal responsibility between the TSS and the Guernsey Competition & Regulatory Authority (GCRA), which had been confusing matters.

The government has now made some changes and fostered a co-operation agreement (MOU) between the two organisations, which should avoid the overlapping of statutory functions that might have risked creating uncertainty for consumers and licensees alike.

Michael Byrne, CEO f the GCRA, said (BBC News):

“While no telecoms provider wants to fall out with its customers, situations do arise that cannot be resolved directly. Having an independent third party to turn to is an asset for consumers and this MOU plugs a gap in the complaints process.”

Time will tell whether the new approach works as intended.

Some of BT’s broadband ISP, phone, TV and mobile customers, specifically a proportion of those who have been or are in the process of being migrated to EE, appear to be experiencing a variety of problems with the process that is causing headaches. Missing services, trouble accessing accounts and general admin errors are just some of the issues being reported.

As most readers will hopefully recall, BT has spent the past couple of years gradually working on a big branding change (here and here) that will – over time – gradually turn EE into their “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (i.e. converged broadband ISP and mobile plans etc.). But history tends to show that such major changes and migrations rarely go as smoothly as providers would like.

Since then there have been a series of gradual moves (e.g. product changes and withdrawals) to help facilitate this transition, such as the decision to withdraw BT Mobile and the offering of special discounts to help encourage BT’s customers to migrate over to an equivalent EE package. The latter has been going on for a little while now, albeit seemingly not without causing some headaches.

Over the past few months we’ve received and seen a steady stream of complaints about BT to EE migrations that have hit difficulties. The complaints vary, but some people say that not all of their bundled services were successfully migrated or that their attempts to migrate have been rejected multiple times, while others found problems with account and device access post-migration (i.e. being unable to manage accounts post-switch, via either EE’s website or the app, seems to be a particularly common complaint).

In the odd other example, EE’s staff have occasionally appeared to setup a broadband or other service order at the same address, creating two accounts for the same customer that has then taken a long time to correctly merge and resolve. Some of these issues have also caused knock-on effects, such as by preventing customers from being able to pair their EE router to the broadband account or to see/manage bills on the My EE App.

After receiving a few complaints about this we went hunting to see if any other gripes could be found and, suffice to say, there are plenty of related issues cropping up on BT and EE’s respective community forums (examples from the EE forum here, here, here, here and here etc.).

Sample Complaint 1

“Don’t know if it’s of interest but EE are having major problems migrating people off BT over to EE when it’s time to renew their contract. Personally I’ve had over 8 hours on numerous phone calls trying to sort out problems which started on Friday 31 May.

Basically someone in EE or BT had set up a broadband order at the same address creating 2 accounts, 1 account I did order and a different account and email address. Sent a new EE router and can’t pair it to the broadband account so cannot see bills on the My EE app.”

Sample Complaint 2

“I switched over from BT start of March and still can’t access my BB account despite multiple calls and confirmations that it would be fixed.”

Sample Complaint 3

“I renewed my contract for Broadband, Mobile and TV – with the understanding that the account would be migrated to EE – back on the 16th of May. Currently my Mobile and Broadband are on the new EE account but the TV order is lost in the system and I haven’t been able to watch Netflix, Now or TNT since the beginning of June plus I can’t see my account on My EE. I have spoke to a multitude of support people in trying to get this resolved but currently without any joy and I’m beginning to get fed up with having to chase EE.”

Sample Complaint 4

“Switched my BT broadband and TV 4 months ago, despite numerous calls to EE I can’t manage broadband or TV on either the website or the app. Have been told it’s a BT to EE migration issue, but no sign of it being fixed. Pretty poor, especially as I can’t manage my TV package – I wonder if it give me grounds to cancel?”

Naturally, we asked EE (BT) if they were aware of these issues and what, if anything, was being done to resolve them. The provider didn’t give us a comment but reiterated that they were committed to keeping their customers connected and providing good customer service.

However, EE did acknowledge that a small proportion of customers had been impacted by the issues we mentioned (the term ‘small’ is often relative when talking about a provider with c.9-10 million customers), and they are currently prioritising resources to provide solutions to these customers as soon as possible.

As we say, large and complex bulk customer migrations – between platforms or providers – can be fraught with difficulties and unexpected complications. But the hope is that BT and EE will be learning from these early problems in order to ensure that the majority of customers get a smoother ride.

Alternative UK network operators Trooli and OFNL, which are in the process of rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTT) groadband network across various parts of the United Kingdom, have today become the latest providers to join the Fibre Cafe connectivity aggregation platform.

Fibre Cafe’s platform is essentially designed to tackle the significant integration and automation challenges for broadband ISPs when onboarding new networks (e.g. common processes, a national availability checker, alternative network agnostic order journeys and a unified interface etc.), whilst enabling such operators to more easily bring their own wholesale propositions to market.

Together, Trooli and OFNL collectively bring an “additional 500,000 premises” to The Fibre Café platform. Joining The Fibre Café is also said to mark the “first step in Trooli’s wholesale strategy headed up by Wholesale Director, Rhiannon O’Neill, following her appointment to the role last year.”

Wail Sabbagh, Managing Director at Strategic Imperatives, said:

“We are thrilled to welcome Trooli and OFNL to The Fibre Café and look forward to supporting their wholesale growth as a key partner. By joining the platform, both network owners gain a significant competitive advantage through streamlined onboarding, enhanced automation, and direct access to a rapidly expanding pool of service providers.”

The announcement also reveals that Trooli’s FTTP network has now covered 370,000 premises (Ready for Service), which is the first update we’ve had since January 2024 when the figure was 334,000 premises. We suspect they may also now be including their Axione UK base from Scotland into that total. This in turn suggests that OFNL now have 130,000 premises.

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of UK broadband ISP and network business TalkTalk, James Smith, has revealed that the debt-laden group’s existing shareholders have “confirmed their intent to provide new funding of over £200m” to support the company’s “working capital and operational costs“.

The provider has already spent much of the past couple of years wrestling with its existing c.£1bn debt pile, which in 2023 culminated in a plan to demerge the group into three separate businesses (TalkTalk Consumer, TalkTalk Business Direct and the wholesale centric PlatformX Communications – here), while also cutting costs (e.g. marketing) and monetising some assets (e.g. selling IP addresses).

The demerger may also, in theory, make it easier to sell off individual parts of the business (selling the entire group proved tricky) and Virgin Media (VMO2) has previously been linked with a possible acquisition of their consumer broadband business (here), although nothing has come of that yet. The first piece to go was technically TT Business Direct, which ended up being sold to the company’s own shareholders for £95m after struggling to attract other fish (here).

The latest development indicates that the group’s existing backers – Sir Charles Dunstone, Toscafund and Ares Management – will meet next week to confirm an injection of over £200m to help keep the business rolling. According to Sky News, separate discussions with Australian banking giant Macquarie about a larger investment into TalkTalk’s wholesale network business, PlatformX, are still being discussed.

Just for some context. In May 2024 we reported (here) that TalkTalk was attempting to raise £450m from the possible sale of a large stake in PlatformX to Macquarie which, if successful, would help to pay off some of the debt and avoid a default. Suffice to say that TalkTalk are still very much in the midst of trying to resolve their now legendary debt problems, with pressure from several looming repayment deadlines helping to concentrate minds.

James Smith, Group CFO, said:

“We anticipate agreement on new capital investment into the business in the near future, and discussions to achieve that are ongoing. Engagement continues with a potential new investor, together with potential new lenders.

At the same time, the group’s existing shareholders have confirmed their intent to provide new funding of over £200m into the group to support working capital and operational costs.

Those shareholders and the company are in dialogue with existing group lenders, or their advisers, regarding the optimal route to put that funding into the business.”

According to the report, a key meeting will be held on Tuesday next week that should help to hammer out the details, which if agreed may also be accompanied by an amend-and-extend agreement with the group’s lending banks.

A new report from think tank Create Street has suggested that the new UK government should make it easier for local authorities to remove old and “ugly” pay phone boxes, which are said to damage the look of many high streets by attracting litter, graffiti and.. other things.

The focus here is on the more modern boxes (e.g. KX100+), rather than BT’s classic red kiosks across the UK or KCOM’s cream-coloured ones in Hull – many of those are now protected. There are now roughly 20,000 remaining working payphones (aka – “Public Call Boxes” or PCB) across the UK, around 3,000 of which are in traditional red kiosks.

However, the new report suggests that more than half of the remaining boxes are likely to be “blighting” the UK’s streets, which are said to act as magnets for graffiti, littering, fly tipping, drug taking and worse. But the report claims that removing these can sometimes end up costing tens of thousands of pounds, such as when operators add a claim for lost advertising money.

According to The Guardian‘s summary (Create Street don’t seem to have posted the report on their website yet), the think tank suggests that one way to resolve this would be via a legislative change to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to make it easier to remove phone boxes. For example, changing it so that operators are only compensated for the cost to remove the box and not for any lost advertising revenue.

Nicholas Boys Smith, Founder of Create Street, said:

“Box blight is a menace hiding in plain sight, attracting litter, cluttering up our pavements and making all our streets and square a little bit uglier and less pleasant. We don’t have to put up with this and we shouldn’t. Other countries don’t. Our paper sets out practical steps that the new government can take now to make our streets and town centres better and more prosperous.”

We should point out that BT has spent the past few years decommissioning many of their old payphones, most of which were no longer being used – largely due to improvements in mobile coverage and related service affordability. Some of those have been replaced by the operator’s new smart WiFi Street Hub kiosks (mostly in cities), while others have been adopted by local authorities or registered charities under the “Adopt a Kiosk” scheme (e.g. turning them into WiFi hotspots, 4G small cells, mini libraries or storage for life-saving public defibrillators – there are about 700 of the latter).

Suffice to say that some of those old payphone boxes do more than merely act as ugly advertising holders, but certainly there will be others that people would perhaps rather see being removed. No doubt many of those reading this article today will be able to think of a few examples from their own area.

On the other hand, Ofcom does generally expect operators to retire unused boxes over time, and so most of those may still end up going extinct and without the need for new legislation. Put another way, there is probably more scope for a voluntary solution to this than complex and slow legislative change.

Existing customers of BT’s online Cloud storage service, which was once frequently offered alongside their various broadband packages, have been notified that the long-running service will finally be switched off on 31st October 2024. At this point “all information will be deleted“, so now might be a good time for users to download anything of relevance.

The move, which was spotted by one of ISPreview’s forum community members – ‘Some Edinburgh Guy‘ (here), should not come as too much of a surprise. BT stopped making BT Cloud available to new customers almost exactly two years ago (here), which occurred at the same time as they did the same for their Email service.

Thankfully, there is a fair bit of choice to be found online when it comes to Cloud storage services (Dropbox, OneDrive etc.), although not all of them provide a free option. The official statement can be found below.

BT Cloud is closing

From 31 October 2024, our BT Cloud will close, and all information will be deleted.

We’ll start reaching out to customers to let them know that the BT Cloud is closing and advise them to download/move their data.

From 9 September the BT Cloud will become read-only.

Content will still be viewable, and available to download, but you won’t be able to upload anything new.

If you pay for additional storage, you won’t be charged from 9 September 2024.

Merseyside-based UK ISP BeFibre, which is powered by FullFibre Ltd’s national gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, has sweetened the existing discounts on their top 900Mbps (symmetric) broadband package by throwing in a £75 Amazon gift card (£50 if you take a shorter 12-month term). The package costs from £29 per month on a 24-month term (£45 thereafter).

The package itself includes free installation, a WiFi 6 capable Linksys router, a pledge of no in-contract price hikes and 30-day service guarantee. But the Amazon gift card bonus will only be available to take on orders made before Wednesday 31st July 2024.

The underlying full fibre network, which as of May 2024 could be reached by about 339,000 premises (RFS) across England (here), is available to parts of Derbyshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

News

Telcos will not longer be allowed to implement mid-contract price rises linked to unclear metrics like inflation

In December last year, Ofcom proposed the introduction of stricter rules surrounding mid-contract price hikes for mobile, pay-TV, and broadband customers, after an investigation found that many customers were confused

The issue primarily related to inflation-based price increases, where pricing would be linked to indexes like the consumer price index (CPI) or retail price index (RPI) – indices not well understood by consumers, leading to unexpected increases in their bills.

Now, following a consultation, Ofcom has announced that new rules will indeed be introduced, requiring telecoms operators to express mid-contract price rises “prominently and transparently” in pounds and pence.

Providers will also be required to clearly explain when price increases will occur,

“Providers must draw this information to the customer’s attention prominently before they are bound by the contract, in a clear and comprehensible manner (including during a sales call or other verbal sale such as an in-store sale) to enable them to make an informed choice. Providers must also set out when any changes to the monthly price will occur,” said Ofcom in a statement.

“With household budgets squeezed, people need to have certainty about their monthly outgoings. But that’s impossible if you’re tied into a contract where the price could change based on something as hard to predict as future inflation,” said Cristina Luna-Esteban, Ofcom’s Telecoms Policy Director. “We’re stepping in on behalf of phone, broadband and pay TV customers to stamp out this practice, so people can be certain of the price they will pay, compare deals more easily and take advantage of the competitive market we have in the UK.”

The new rules will officially come into effect from 17 January 2025.

Many of the UK’s providers had already made the required changes pre-emptively over the past six months, with BT notably having already announced its revised price increases for 2025.

The UK’s largest digital economy event is just around the corner! Join the telecoms community in discussion on key issues at this year’s Connected Britain conference

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Power play: Thailand’s biggest telco to merge with energy giant
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Telecom Egypt readies for country’s first 5G services

News  

The sale comes off the back of a financially poor first quarter for Commscope 

Commscope has announced a deal to sell its mobile networks businesses to Amphenol for $2.1 billion.  

Specifically, the deal includes the purchase of CommScope’s Outdoor Wireless Networks (OWN) segment as well as the Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) business, which resides in CommScope’s Networking, Intelligent Cellular and Security Solutions (NICS) unit.  

The acquired businesses are projected to generate full-year 2024 sales of approximately $1.2 billion and EBITDA margins of 25%.  

Commscope says the deal will allow it to better manage its debt load, which currently stands at $9.3 billion. In its Q1 earning report published in May, net sales had declined by 30% to $1.17 billion, with management noting the “challenging” nature of the period, as it “continues to deal with lower demand.” 

The sale of its mobile networking technology units will allow Commscope to focus on its fixed line products, a segment that was boosted by the acquisition of Casa earlier in the year. 

Amphenol, on the other hand, says the deal will help complement their existing wireless portfolio. 

“We are excited by the prospect of adding CommScope’s mobile networks businesses and their approximately 4,000 talented employees to the Amphenol family. CommScope’s advanced technologies in base station antennas and interconnect solutions, along with distributed antenna systems, significantly enhance our existing offerings,” said R. Adam Norwitt, President and CEO of Amphenol in a press release. 

“In particular, we are encouraged that the businesses we are acquiring make up the former Andrew Corporation portfolio of products, a company with a rich history of innovation and technology leadership in the wireless industry. We look forward to supporting customers who are developing next-generation wireless networks around the world with these advanced solutions as well as our own existing complementary products.” 

Norwitt also highlighted the alignment of the acquisition with Amphenol’s long-term growth strategy, placing emphasis on the better support the company will be able to provide to customers developing next-generation wireless networks globally.  

Amphenol plans to finance the acquisition through a combination of cash and debt. The company confirmed that it is scheduled to discuss this acquisition in further detail during the company’s Q2 2024 earnings call later this month. 

The transaction is subject to standard regulatory approval and is anticipated to close in the first half of 2025. 

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Also in the news:
Power play: Thailand’s biggest telco to merge with energy giant
Germany implements long-awaited Huawei ban
Telecom Egypt readies for country’s first 5G services