Mobile Operator EE Coughs to Being Late with 118 Price Cap

BT, the owner of EE, has provided information to Ofcom that suggests it failed to apply the regulator’s new price cap on UK calls to 118 numbers (Directory Enquiries) until mid-April 2019, which may have resulted in a tiny number of customers being incorrectly charged.

Few people use 118 numbers now that the internet is so pervasive. Nevertheless Ofcom recently noted that some operators of such services were charging as much as £20 for a 90 second call and so they decided to take action. In response the regulator capped the maximum cost that a 118 service can charge at £3.65 per 90 seconds and this was enforced from 1st April 2019 (here).

Sadly BT recently informed Ofcom that a number of their EE customers were able to call 118 numbers, until mid-April 2019, without this cap being applied. The regulator has thus opened a new investigation to “examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that EE has failed to comply with its obligations” (here). This looks to be a fairly minor incident and one that BT should have no problem rectifying.