BT Fined £800K for Late Rollout of an Improved Text-to-Voice Service

The national UK telecoms regulator has fined BT £800,000 after the operator last year failed to make an improved text-to-voice service available to its customers with hearing or speech impairments.

The situation stems from a requirement that Ofcom introduced towards the end of 2012, which forced all of the markets major landline phone and mobile providers to launch a Next Generation Text Service by 18th April 2014.

But BT missed this deadline due to “technical problems with the sound quality of emergency calls” and ended up introducing the service several months late on 24th September 2014.

Claudio Pollack, Ofcom’s Consumer and Content Group Director, said:

“The size of the penalty imposed on BT reflects the importance of providing an improved text relay service to its customers with hearing and speech impairments. However, BT has invested significantly in launching the new text relay service, which allows users to have conversations more easily and fluently and on new devices. We welcome the fact the service is now operating successfully.“

According to BT, the problems were a one-off incident and Ofcom’s investigation acknowledged that the issue only became apparent late on. On top of that the regulator also noted that “the level of financial harm to consumers was limited“, although they also felt as if BT had been given more than enough time to prepare (18 months).