O2 network crash hits "hundreds of thousands"

 

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 12 Jul 2012 at 08:47

O2 is struggling to get services back up and running after a system crash left hundreds of thousands of customers without voice and data services.

The network claims it has now restored 2G services for affected customers and is advising users to turn off 3G to receive and make calls and send texts.

"We can confirm that our 2G network service has now been restored -customers who were affected should now be able to make and receive calls," O2 said.

"Our 3G service is starting to restore and customers should expect to see a gradual return of data services as the day progresses. Customers affected may wish to try switching their mobile phones off and on as service returns."

The company said that because the problem wasn't affecting one particular area or a particular block of numbers it was impossible to know exactly how many people were affected, but a source within the company confirmed to PC Pro that the scale was "hundreds of thousands of people based on our feedback".

The service outage was blamed on a subset of users being unable to register on the network. "We can confirm that the problem with our mobile service is due to a fault with one of our network systems, which has meant some mobile phone numbers are not registering correctly on our network," the company said in a statement.

"As a result, some customers are having difficulty making or receiving calls, sending texts or using data."

The issue was also affecting GiffGaff and Tesco mobile customers, whose services piggyback on the O2 network.