Investigation into Vonage’s compliance with obligations relating to emergency call access, network security and network availability

Ofcom has published a non-confidential version of the Confirmation Decision issued to Vonage on 11 December 2018:

Confirmation Decision under section 96C of the Communications Act 2003
(PDF, 406.4 KB)

On 11 December 2018, Ofcom issued a Confirmation Decision to Vonage under section 96C of the Communications Act in this investigation.

Our investigation found that Vonage, a provider of VoIP telephony services had contravened General Condition 3.1(c)^[1] by failing to provide uninterrupted access to the emergency organisations.

The contravention occurred as a result of Vonage’s failure to complete emergency call testing following implementation of a call routing change. Additionally, Vonage failed to identify the fact that emergency calls were not connecting successfully following the routing change. This meant that Vonage’s customers were left unable to access the emergency organisations on the Vonage network for a significant period of time.

Ofcom's Confirmation Decision imposes a financial penalty of £24,500 on Vonage. The penalty includes a 30% discount from the penalty that Ofcom would otherwise have imposed, on account of Vonage's admission of liability and its agreement to enter into a settlement.

Given that access to the emergency organisations is of utmost importance to public health and security, Ofcom expects CPs to do everything they possibly can to ensure that their customers have uninterrupted access to the emergency organisations.

Ofcom will make available a public version of the Confirmation Decision as soon as possible.

^{[1]Under the revised General Conditions the obligations relating to availability of services and access to emergency organisations are found in  GC A.3.}

Ofcom has today opened an investigation into Vonage’s compliance with General Condition 3.1 (“GC3.1”) and section 105A of the Communications Act 2003 (“the Act”).

GC3.1 requires communication providers (“CPs”) to take all necessary measures to maintain, to the greatest extent possible (a) the proper and effective functioning of the public communications network at all times (b) in the event of catastrophic network breakdown or in cases of force majeure the fullest availability of the public communications network and telephone services and (c) uninterrupted access to emergency organisations for their end-users.

Section 105A(1) of the Act requires CPs to take technical and organisational measures to manage risks to the security of public electronic communications networks and services. These must include measures to prevent or minimise the impact of security incidents on end-users (section 105A(2)) and on interconnection (section 105A(3)). Section 105A(4) of the Act requires CPs to take all appropriate steps to protect, so far as possible the availability of the provider’s public electronic communications network.

Ofcom’s investigation will examine whether there are reasonable grounds for believing that Vonage has failed to comply with its obligations under GC3.1 and section 105A of the Act. We aim to complete our evidence gathering phase in this investigation in May 2018. We will publish a further update on next steps then.