Ofcom investigates Vodafone failure of 101 and 111 services
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Ofcom are investigating Vodafone over a failure of the Non-emergency Police (101) and NHS (111) phone lines. While Vodafone may be better know for its lacklustre premium priced phone network I wasn't aware they were running this service too!
Vodafone, which operates both numbers, apologised and is investigating. It said the lines were fixed by 1pm on Saturday 22nd November.
Ofcom said it was investigating the problem "as a matter of urgency".
The telecoms watchdog said it was in contact with Vodafone "to fully understand the issues".
Motoring organisation RAC said its breakdown number also went down this morning after "Vodafone suffered a catastrophic failure to its telephone equipment" affecting "many large businesses" who use its services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30159433
Vodafone, which operates both numbers, apologised and is investigating. It said the lines were fixed by 1pm on Saturday 22nd November.
Ofcom said it was investigating the problem "as a matter of urgency".
The telecoms watchdog said it was in contact with Vodafone "to fully understand the issues".
Motoring organisation RAC said its breakdown number also went down this morning after "Vodafone suffered a catastrophic failure to its telephone equipment" affecting "many large businesses" who use its services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30159433
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Comments
Critical service.. no redundancies all the way.. oh dear.
The backup plan was "If service fails dial 999 instead as we don't run it"
No doubt it will be brushed under the carpet
One of the tweets the BBC mentioned said that it was a failure of equipment in Birmingham.
Now, this is speculation, but Birmingham just happens to be centrally located - is the nationwide 101 service (and a lot more besides if the RAC were affected) really run from a single point of failure in Birmingham?
I'm glad 999 is more distributed and (presumably) BT has responsibility over it - BT might not be the world leaders in competence but they seem a lot better at it than others. I hope it was just Vodafone working to a limited budget than incompetence on their part
I'm also assuming that Vodafone in this instance really means the former Cable and Wireless operation
They are all integrated fully now anyway.
http://www.a516digital.com/2014/09/fault-affects-bbc-tv-and-dab-services.html
Before Vodafone bought them, C&W were also in the BBC's bad books because they managed to design a redundant and geographically diverse fibre ring that at one point had both legs pass through the same building. One day the air con in the building failed and took out the optical equipment on both paths so all of the BBC's radio distribution north of that point failed. Someone did an FOI request and there's all of the BBC's internal documents on it on the internet somewhere
I wonder if this is more of the same
I'm sure they have redundancy and contingency in place, but it didn't work as hoped!
In any case these things can happen, and it was pretty bad but at least it was the non emergency number. You'd like to think the 999 network was far more rigorously protected/tested.
I quote
"It’s an honour that 77% of the UK’s emergency services use our network to help them deliver essential services to millions of people.
Our technology lets paramedics stream patient data in real time to A&E departments, so the best care is available on arrival. Our rugged tablets and smartphones mean fire crews have constant access to vital information – even in the most demanding of circumstances. While for the police, we make it possible to gather and transmit witness statements electronically"
This is vodafone your talking about.