Update 7.30pm GMT: The data outage continues as O2 and Ericsson continue to make this a top priority and we are slowly beginning to restore services which will continue throughout tonight.
Mark Evans, CEO, Telefonica (O2) UK stated,
I want to let our customers know how sorry I am for the impact our network data issue has had on them, and reassure them that our teams, together with Ericsson, are doing everything we can.
We will continue to work with Ericsson, through the night, who have assured us that a full service will be restored for customers by the morning. We fully appreciate it’s been a poor experience and we are really sorry.
Marielle Lindgren, CEO Ericsson UK & Ireland added,
The cause of today’s network issue is in certain nodes in the core network resulting in network disturbances for a limited number of customers across the world, including in the UK. We have been working hard on resolving the UK data issue since early this morning. The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned. Our priority is to restore full data services on the network by tomorrow morning. Ericsson sincerely apologises to customers for the inconvenience caused.
O2 customers throughout the UK have been left with no data connectivity or 3G and 4G services after a technical fault caused a UK-wide outage.
The company said that the problem stemmed from a global software issue at a third-party supplier, understood to be Ericsson, which has also affected other mobile operators around the world.
O2 has 25 million customers, but also provides services for Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks which have another seven million users.
O2 has responded saying that it is aware of an issue stopping users accessing data and is treating it as a matter of high priority.
The network issue we are currently experiencing remains a top priority for us and we are working as quickly as possible to fix the issues.
All O2 technical teams are working closely with one of our third party suppliers who has identified a global software issue in their system which has impacted data services. As a result of this incident, we are experiencing a high demand on our network which means some customers may have issues making and receiving voice calls.
We believe other mobile operators around the world are also affected.
We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience.
Numerous people tweeted at O2’s official Twitter account – which has been attempting to offer updates on the problems throughout the morning – to express their frustration over the fact they were unable to get onto the internet.
Some users even asked for compensation for the outage period. Regulator Ofcom says that it is unlikely that carriers will have to offer refunds for the problem period, but that such a payout is possible if it lasts for a long time or the network wants to make amends.
It should be pointed out that users can still connect to Wifi to access the Internet and this allows calls to be made via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and others.
