Technical faults to the 999 emergency call service on Sunday are of “serious concern”, the county’s police commissioner has said.
People were prevented from calling 999 across the country from around 8.30am due to the telecommunications company BT experiencing technical faults.
The system failures impacted emergency services and minor issues persisted when BT switched to a “back-up system” at around 10am.
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Matthew Barber, Thames Valley’s police and crime commissioner, said the impact was “not critical and business continuity plans were put in place” across the county.
He said: “Early on Sunday morning, there was a national fault with the 999 service operated by BT.
“Any such failure is naturally of serious concern.
“I will be asking both BT and the Home Office to explain yesterday’s events and put in place mitigation to reduce the risk of further outages.”
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A BT spokesman said: “We are sincerely sorry for the distress this has caused.
“There was a short period of time as we switched over to the back-up system during which calls could not get through.”
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BT has clarified it was still able to see the callers trying to get through and calls were re-directed to the back up system urgently.
The 999 call service returned to normal on Sunday evening and the back-up system is no longer in use.
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