Closed
Ofcom
Vonage Business Limited
19 March 2024
25 September 2025
Investigation following Vonage’s notification of an incident which resulted in disruption for its business customers to emergency call services between 23 October 2023 and 3 November 2023.
General Condition A3.2(b) and sections 105A, 105C and 105K of the Communications Act 2003.
Ofcom has issued a Confirmation Decision to Vonage Business Limited (‘Vonage’) under section 96C of the Communications Act 2003 (‘the Act’) in respect of this investigation.
Ofcom opened the investigation into Vonage following its notification to Ofcom of an issue which affected its business customers (using physical desktop phones). These customers were unable to call emergency services between 23 October 2023 and 3 November 2023.
Our investigation has found that Vonage has breached General Condition A3.2(b) by failing to take all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations. We consider this to be a serious breach of the condition, which is set by Ofcom to ensure that users have telephone access to emergency organisations at all times.
We found that Vonage did not have adequate processes to identify network changes which had the potential to impact the availability of emergency calls, and also that Vonage did not have sufficient oversight of its network to enable it to identify an outage affecting emergency calls.
Vonage has since taken action to remedy the contravention and improve its change management and network monitoring processes for calls to emergency organisations.
We are imposing a penalty of £700,000 on Vonage. This penalty was set having regard to our Penalty Guidelines and includes a 30% discount as a result of Vonage’s admission of liability and its completion of Ofcom’s settlement process.
As a matter of administrative priority, our investigation prioritised considering the most serious concerns arising out of this incident under GC A3.2(b) and we have not made any finding on whether Vonage has contravened its duties under section 105A, 105C or 105K of the Communications Act 2003.
A non-confidential version of the Confirmation Decision will be published shortly.
Ofcom has today opened an own-initiative investigation into Vonage’s compliance with General Condition A3.2(b) (GC A3.2(b)) and sections 105A, 105C and 105K of the Communications Act 2003. The investigation follows Vonage’s notification of an incident which resulted in disruption for its business customers to emergency call services between 23 October 2023 and 3 November 2023.
GC A3.2(b) requires certain communications providers to take all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations as part of any voice communications services offered.
Section 105A requires providers of public electronic communications networks and services (providers) to take such measures as are appropriate and proportionate to identify and reduce the risks of, and prepare for the occurrence of, security compromises, including anything that compromises the availability, performance or functionality of the network or service.
Section 105C requires providers to take such measures as are appropriate and proportionate to prevent adverse effects arising from a security compromise that has occurred. Where a security compromise has an adverse effect on the network or service, the provider must take such measures as are appropriate and proportionate to remedy or mitigate that effect.
Section 105K requires providers to inform Ofcom as soon as reasonably practicable of any security compromise that has a significant effect on the operation of a network or service.
Ofcom’s investigation will seek to establish the facts surrounding the incident and examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that Vonage has failed to comply with its regulatory obligations.
Enforcement team (enforcement@ofcom.org.uk)
CW/01282/03/24