Regulator finds Manx Telecom not in breach of obligations following incident that affected 999 calls

Two unrelated incidents occurred on 6 and 8 January 2024

The Communications and Utilities Regulatory Authority has published the findings of an investigation into two separate network incidents, one of which interrupted calls to 999 services.

A ‘significant’ number of Isle of Man residents were affected by an outage relating to “memory used for data replication in online charging” for mobile services becoming full on 6 January.

The regulator says Manx Telecom worked to find and resolve the cause, with services fully restored the same day.

However, a second incident occurred on 8 January, which led to calls to 999 services being interrupted across all networks on the Island.

A preliminary enquiry was conducted to establish whether Manx Telecom had breached its obligations leading to, or as a direct result of the outages.

CURA looked specifically at Manx Telecom’s licences which require ‘proper and effective functioning of the network’, which was found to have been met.

 The investigation considered whether all ‘reasonable practicable step’ were taken by MT to bring its networks back online, as well as whether the provider had taken all ‘reasonable practicable steps’ to maintain the network before the incidents occurred.

“Having fully examined the information provided with regards to the incident on 8 January, the authority finds that the incident did not occur as a result of a fault on Manx Telecom’s network”

As such, MT was cleared of responsibility for interruption to 999 calls.

In relation to the incident on 6 January, the regulator found Manx Telecom did take all reasonably practicable steps.

CURA says when a network failure occurs, an alarm is typically raised on the system.  But on this occasion, the system was not configured to raise an alarm but does not believe MT was ‘negligent’.

Manx Telecom has subsequently confirmed it has configured the systems to ensure alarms will be triggered if the same incident were to occur again.

Overall – on this occasion – the authority does not believe Manx Telecom breached its regulatory obligations, and no further investigation is required.