New law could see £10k daily fines for telecom service failures

Wednesday 31 July 2024

Telecommunication providers could be fined up to £10,000 per day for network failures, if proposed new legislation is approved by politicians.

Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel has proposed amending current legislation in a bid to safeguard Jersey’s critical infrastructure.

The new telecoms security framework, which aims to improve digital security and reliability in response to evolving cyber threats, would give the Government and regulators new powers to supervise telecom providers.

Pictured: The Economic Development Minister could be given the power to fine telecoms providers up to £10,000 per day for violations of security duties, if new legislation is passed in the States Assembly. 

If approved, the new law would grant the Minister powers to impose penalties of up to 10% of a telecoms provider’s turnover or £10,000 per day for ongoing violations that contravene their legal duties. 

This legislation comes in the wake of several instances across the last five years where islanders were unable to call 999 due to network failures. 

The report accompanying the proposition explained: “The Royal Court has power to impose an unlimited fine where a public communications provider is guilty of the offence of continuing to provide a service or make associated facilities available in breach of a direction suspending their ability to do so.”

Under the proposed changes, the Minister would also be able to designate certain vendors as “high-risk” and place restrictions on telecom providers’ use of their equipment.

The Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority (JCRA) would receive additional oversight capabilities and £250,000 in annual funding to support these new responsibilities.

The framework would be implemented gradually and follow a consultation process with providers including Airtel-Vodafone, JT and Sure.

Pictured: JT was fined £380,000 last year for an outage which left islanders unable to call emergency services for almost an hour.

At the end of last year, JT was fined £380,000 for an outage in 2022 which left islanders unable to call emergency services for almost an hour – something a watchdog said could have had "potentially life-threatening consequences".

An investigation concluded that “JT failed to take all reasonable steps, within its control, to ensure the integrity of its network”.

This licence condition breach was considered the “most serious due to the length of time over which JT could and should have acted to uphold the reliability and resilience of its network”.

The watchdog has issued financial penalties and directions to JT for eight previous incidents since January 2020, all relating to the public emergency call service.

The draft regulations will be debated on the States Assembly on 10 September.