Ofcom Probe Gigaclear Over Failure to Provide UK Caller Details to Emergency Services UPDATE

The UK telecoms and media regulator, Ofcom, has launched an investigation into rural broadband ISP Gigaclear over a possible failure to “provide accurate and reliable caller location information to emergency organisations“, which could have made it more difficult for the police, fire and ambulances to find callers.

The network operator, which is principally owned by Infracapital (together with Equitix and Railpen), has so far built a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 500,000 rural premises (RFS) in England (inc. 100,000 customers) and they hold an ambition to cover “over” 1 million premises by 2027.

Gigaclear also offers a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) based Home Phone service from £3 per month, although the small print on their website states that they “do not recommend you purchase home phone if you are reliant on your landline due to disability or accessibility requirements and do not have alternative means to contact emergency services in the event of a power outage.”

However, under Ofcom’s rules (General Conditions A3.5 (GC A3.5) and A3.6(a) (GC A3.6(a))), when someone calls 112 or 999 using a landline with a VoIP connection, their telecoms provider must – to the extent it is technically feasible – make accurate and reliable information about the caller’s location available to the emergency organisation handling the call, at the time it is answered. But Gigaclear may not have been doing this correctly.

Ofcom’s Statement (CW/01287/09/24)

Gigaclear notified Ofcom of various issues with its caller location information between January 2022 and 11th March 2024.

At this stage, we are not aware of any harm to members of the public that arose as a result. However, we take compliance with these requirements extremely seriously, due to the potential harm that may occur.

Our investigation will seek to establish the facts surrounding this matter and examine whether Gigaclear failed to comply with its regulatory obligations.

Investigations like this often take quite a while to run their course, and so it will probably be sometime later in 2025 before the outcome is known. The outcome will depend upon the severity of the issue, although a modest financial penalty is always a possibility with things like this (Gigaclear are not a huge provider of home phone services).

UPDATE 11:48am

We’ve had a statement from Gigaclear on this.

GIGACLEAR STATEMENT ON OFCOM INVESTIGATION

Ofcom’s announcement of a formal investigation is related to a historic issue with the configuration of Gigaclear’s VoIP service and the resulting accuracy of caller location information (CLI) provided to emergency organisations. This follows Gigaclear self-reporting to Ofcom in April 2024.

In our notification we reassured Ofcom that the configuration issue was swiftly fixed, and that at all times before and after the fix, all emergency calls placed by our VoIP customers were successfully connected. We have had no notification of, nor are we aware of, any consequences or harm resulting from this incident. We have also assured Ofcom that a robust system of ongoing monitoring and testing is in place to ensure it will not arise again.

Having received notification from Ofcom of its intention to open a formal investigation, we intend to cooperate fully with this, and as a result will not comment further at this stage.