New O2 Outage Leaves Millions Without Mobile Coverage
O2 promises to resolve problem by the end of the afternoon
O2 has admitted to yet another network outage that has affected roughly one in ten of its 22 million customers in the UK.
Customers have voiced their frustration on social networks, after not being able to make calls, send texts or access mobile data services.
The operator has said it has identified the cause of the problem and that it should be resolved by the end of the afternoon.
O2 Outage Affects Millions
“Approximately 10% of our customers have experienced intermittent service when making calls or using data since lunchtime today,” a company spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. “Some customers will already have had their service restored and we will have a full fix this afternoon. We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused those customers.”
Just heading out & about around the City. Will try and keep you updated best I can but think the #o2 signals down on my phone 🙁
— GMP City Centre (@GMPCityCentre) October 12, 2012
o2…you’re having a shocking year. Seriously- I now feel unless you buy us all iPhone 5’s immediately, we will leave.
— Lucie Jones (@luciejones1) October 12, 2012
It is believed that the problem is different to the one which resulted in a massive outage in July, and left many customers across the UK unable to use the O2’s network. Engineers said that it was caused by a “fault with one of our network systems, which has meant some mobile phone numbers are not registering correctly with our network.”
To apologise, O2 offered its pay monthly customers 10 percent off their July subscription, and pay-as-you-go users 10 percent extra on their first top-up in September. However, it denied the offer was compensation and did not admit any fault.
Last year, O2 was affected by outages in East London, North London, Kent and Sussex following theft and vandalism and just one month later, users in parts of East London and Essex were left without coverage.
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