Orange Restores 3G Data Network After Outage

Mobile operator Orange has restored its 3G data network following an outage which affected users in many parts of the country on Thursday.

Customers were unable to use mobile internet functionality from around midday, though call and text services continued to work.

‘Configuration change’ issue

Everything Everywhere, Orange’s parent company, stated that T-Mobile was unaffected and some users were later able to resolve the data network issue by manually switching their connection over to the partner brand. This cross-network capability was announced last October as a way to boost signal strength.

Orange suffered a similar outage in August 2010, but this time the company responded to consumer complaints through Twitter (but not via texts to some disdain) and clarified the reason behind the problem immediately after it was fixed.

“We can confirm that our mobile data network is now fully restored. The issue stemmed from a configuration change made earlier this afternoon,” Orange said in a statement to TechRadar.

“Orange customers who had an existing data session did not lose their connection and were able to continue as normal but a small number experienced issues in making new connections. We would like to apologise to customers who have experienced problems with their data services.”

The data network outage may serve as fuel for Everything Everywhere to integrate services from both brands under a single name, as was suggested in a prospectus earlier this year. Such a move could potentially negate another outage by automatically switching users to a working network.

Everything Everywhere is currently trial its next-generation 4G LTE mobile data network ahead of a spectrum auction later this year.

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