New O2 Outage Leaves Millions Without Mobile Coverage

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.”

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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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Steve McCaskill

Steve McCaskill is editor of TechWeekEurope and ChannelBiz. He joined as a reporter in 2011 and covers all areas of IT, with a particular interest in telecommunications, mobile and networking, along with sports technology.

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  • O2 has been rubbish both myself and my partner will be leaving next year. I am part of a mountain rescue team and rely on my phone to be called out to save life's. it is an outrage that a company like this has stupid problems

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