Meta fined £450,000 by UK communications watchdog
The UK’s communications regulator has issued a £450,000 fine to Meta for providing inaccurate and incomplete data in response to requests for information.
Ofcom announced the fine in a decision published on Thursday 12 November, resolving the investigation that began on 23 January 2026 into Meta’s compliance with the regulator’s statutory information requests.
The regulator previously issued notices to the US tech giant requiring it to provide data related to WhatsApp Business services, but Meta failed to provide accurate and complete information in response to these notices.
The data was requested to help Ofcom monitor the retail business messaging market and inform its Wholesale A2P SMS Termination Market Review.
According to Ofcom’s decision, Meta provided inaccurate information multiple times in response to questions posed to it by the regulator across two statutory information requests.
The US tech company also provided inaccurate and incomplete information in response to two subsequent requests for clarity from Ofcom.
On multiple occasions, Meta informed Ofcom of errors in the data it had provided to the watchdog, submitting revised and corrected information in later submissions.
This led to Ofcom publishing multiple correction notes to its public consultation, after which it opened an investigation into Meta’s breach of legislation governing statutory information requests.
“We consider these contraventions to be serious as Ofcom’s information-gathering powers under section 135 are essential to the effective exercise of our statutory functions,” Ofcom said.
“Failures to provide accurate information risk undermining the integrity of the regulatory regime and harming citizens’ and consumers’ interests.”
“In this case, the failures were repeated and extended across multiple requests and five separate questions,” the regulator said.
Ofcom said that as a result of this inaccurate data, it had to spend additional resources identifying errors and verifying data.
