Investigation into BT’s compliance with the 118 price cap

Following our investigation, Ofcom has today issued a Confirmation Decision to BT under s96C of the Communication Act 2003 (the ‘Act’) for contravening the rules set out under General Conditions (GC) B1.5, B1.19 and B1.21(b). BT did this by charging its EE mobile customers too much for calls to 118 numbers between 1 April 2019 and 26 June 2019.

Ofcom and BT entered into a settlement process and BT wrote to Ofcom on 10 March 2020, admitting its liability in relation to the nature, scope and duration of the contravention. BT has taken steps to remedy fully the consequences of the breach. In particular, BT has repaid in full those customers that paid too much for a call to a directory enquiry service and put in place steps to minimise the risk of similar issues occurring in future.

We consider that several factors made this a serious breach:

• the potential vulnerability of some of the consumers affected;
• the system failures that contributed to the contravention; and
• EE’s poor record of compliance with its regulatory obligations.

In light of the seriousness of this case, the Confirmation Decision imposes a financial penalty of £245,000 on BT. The penalty also includes a 30% discount from the penalty that Ofcom would otherwise have imposed. That discount reflects resource savings achieved by Ofcom as a result of BT’s admissions of liability and its agreement to enter into a settlement.

On 1 April 2019, new rules came into force which set a price cap of £3.65 per 90 seconds (including VAT) on service charges for calls to Directory Enquiry services, which are provided on 118 numbers.

BT, the owner of EE, has provided Ofcom with information indicating that it did not apply this cap to calls made by a number of its EE customers to 118 numbers until mid-April 2019.

Ofcom takes compliance with its regulations very seriously. Having considered the information provided by BT, we have decided to open an investigation to examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that EE has failed to comply with its obligations under General Conditions B1.5, B1.19, B1.21(b) and B1.23 from 1 April 2019.