Orange Restores Mobile Data Service
Mobile operator Orange says its 3G services are back to normal after days of outages
Orange said on Friday it has resolved a 3G network issue that had interrupted data services for some UK customers.
Orange said the outage occurred on Thursday, but some customers reported experiencing 3G problems on Orange’s network on Wednesday as well.
The outage was caused by an “unusual software issue” which occurred at the same time as a “localised hardware failure”, Orange said in a statement.
“This affected a small number of APNs and meant that some, but not all, of our mobile data customers had problems accessing the mobile Internet,” Orange stated. “We’ll continue to monitor network performance closely, and would like to apologise once again for any inconvenience caused.” An APN, or Access Point Name, is an identifier that allows a user to connect to a 3G or GPRS network.
Orange said service has now been “fully restored”.
User outrage
A number of users had complained of the problems on Internet forums such as Twitter, criticising Orange for the lack of a web-based tool for monitoring the service status of its mobile data network.
“Orange Mobile 3G service down for most of the day,” tweeted comedian Dave Gorman on Wednesday. “No service announcement. Nothing on the website. Patronising customer service. Bad form.”
In a report released earlier this month ABI Research found that European mobile data use is expected to soar over the next few years. But the explosion in data traffic will not mean a corresponding increase in data revenues for mobile operators, partly due to the popularity of unlimited or fixed price plans, ABI said.
This is expected to mean difficulties ahead for operators as they scap their unlimited price plans or face traffic overload, according to the report.
Mobile operator 3 was the latest to scrap its unlimited data plan in July, following similar moves by O2 and Vodafone.
Protests
O2 claimed in June that its new capped data plans, announced in June, were more “transparent” and reflected changes in people’s behaviour. However, some O2 customers were inclined to disagree, staging a mass protest encouraging users to consume all of their mobile data allowance on a single day, to express their anger at the change.
Analyst firm Informa warned in October 2009 that mobile data traffic is set to increase 25-fold by 2012, and said that mobile operators needed to take action in order to prevent imminent data traffic jams.
