UPD O2 UK Hit by National Outage of Mobile Broadband and Phone Services

Mobile operator and ISP O2 UK has suffered a serious nationwide outage of its Mobile Broadband and phone network (i.e. data, calls and texts), which began yesterday afternoon at around 1pm and continues to be sporadically affecting thousands of customers this morning. MVNO’s GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile have also been hit.

The operator, which unlike some of its rivals does at least attempt to keep customers informed, hasn’t revealed much about the cause except to say that it was “due to a fault with one of our network systems” and is being dealt with “as a priority“. Apparently this fault has meant that “some” mobile phone numbers “are not registering correctly on our network” and thus the usual services will fail to function.

O2 Service Status Update (1am)

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

We, and our central supplier, have deployed all possible resources and are working through the night to restore service as soon as possible. We apologise again to customers affected and will provide further updates as soon as we can.

The latest update from O2, which was made at 5:40am this morning, confirms that the problem is still affecting customers and they are “working to restore service as quickly as possible“. Sadly the operator was “unable to confirm any timescales for service restoration“. The issue is affecting both the operator’s older 2G network and its modern 3G platform.

UPDATE 8:44am

As a side note some customers have noticed that their internet traffic, after service was restored, is now being put through a new type of proxy server (see news comments below). It’s unclear whether this is simply a temporary measure or not.

UPDATE 9:13am

O2 now claims to have restored “our 2G network service“, while its “3G service is starting to restore and customers should expect to see a gradual return of data services as the day progresses“. Those affected have also been advised to try switching their phones off and on again if it doesn’t return normally.