- BT and Three networks went down in June and July
- Connections to emergency services were affected
- Ofcom is now investigating the culpability of the networks
Cell phone outages aren’t just an inconvenience, they can actually put lives at risk if emergency service calls are disrupted – and Ofcom has announced it’s investigating BT and Three over major downtime that happened in July of this year.
For BT, there was a software-related issue that caused BT and EE systems to break down on the 24th and 25th of July 2025. As you might remember if you use those providers, customers couldn’t make or receive calls, or get in touch with the emergency services.
A separate incident also affected the Three network across the UK on the 25th of June, so this was clearly a bad couple of months for the country’s networks. Again, customers were left unable to reach the police, ambulance, and fire services through their mobiles.
These incidents were reported by the companies involved, a legal requirement once disruption hits a certain level. It’s Ofcom’s job as the regulator to decide how responsible the service providers are – and whether or not the issues could have been prevented.
We asked both Three and BT for their reactions to the news. A BT spokesperson said: “We are aware that Ofcom has begun an investigation into the technical fault impacting voice calls on our network on 24th and 25th July 2025. We will co-operate fully with Ofcom throughout the investigation and apologise again for any issues caused by this incident.”
Three didn’t respond in time for publication, but we’ll update this article if we hear back.
‘Appropriate and proportionate measures’
“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,” says Ofcom.
“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.”
If Ofcom decides that BT and Three have failed in their duty to keep their networks up and running, a hefty fine is the most likely outcome. Last year, BT was fined £17.5 million by Ofcom for a failure of its service that blocked thousands of 999 calls.
Customers would probably settle for being able to connect to the cellular service they’re paying for, when they need to. Both BT and Three say they are cooperating with the investigation, and hopefully taking steps to stop these problems from happening again.
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