JT handed £50,000 fine over outage

Monday 27 June 2022

JT Limited has been fine £50,000 after a technical failure caused a partial shutdown of its fixed line and 4G network last year.

The fine, issued by the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (JCRA) reflected the seriousness of the failures, which also caused an outage of emergency service calls and the fact that certain factors noted in relation to a previous island-wide outage a year earlier also applied in this case.

A spokesperson for the JCRA said the authority “noted and welcomed the co-operation of JT in what has been a long and complex investigation”.

 “JT’s commitment to put in place a system of checks and balances that have improved its infrastructure, process and procedures and will help it to meet best practice going forward. These mitigating factors were considered by the authority in calculating the appropriate fine.”

JCRA CEO, Tim Ringsdore, added: “I am pleased that this investigation is now complete. It was essential that we conducted a root and branch review of how these failures took place and we have issued directions to JT which will involve JT continuing to report to us on their improvement programme over the coming years, which will help reduce the likelihood of any further recurrence."

Pictured: The outage included emergency calls in Jersey. 

Mr Ringsdore continued: “The licence contraventions were very serious, but we welcome the way in which JT’s team has worked with us, and the measures it has taken to address the issues.”

Tom Noel of JT said: “Since the occurrence of this issue in July 2021, we have worked closely with the JCRA to establish exactly what happened and have put in place all the measures we can to prevent an incident like this in the future. 

“We fully accept the JCRA’s decision and are now focussed on ensuring our networks are as resilient as they can be.”

JT chose not to contest the fine, which was therefore reduced to £45,000, which JT has paid.

It comes after JT was slapped with a separate fine of £90,000 in April this year for a network blackout that caused problems with island-wide broadband and the 999 service in July 2020.