O2 and Vodafone UK Users Suffer Month of Poor Signal in Cullingworth
Customers of mobile operators O2 and Vodafone in the West Yorkshire (England) village of Cullingworth have struggled to get a usable network service for over a month after one of Cornerstone’s (CTIL) local masts suffered a power cut. But a “safety related defect on the structure” appears to be delaying repairs.
The mast in question (eNB 522652), which is pictured on this article, went offline on 2nd October 2024 and has remained down since then – causing some degree of anger among local residents. In response, both operators notified their customers, via a text message (presumably received by those with Wi-Fi Calling enabled or when connecting to a different site), that the “a phone mast close to you isn’t working“.
The notice went on to say that the operators have “got essential work to do” on the mast and were “in the process of gaining permission to get on the site to fix things“. But the wait has now gone on for longer than a month, and residents have been left to scratch their heads as to the reason for the slow progress. Until now.
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A Vodafone Spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’re sorry to our customers who are affected by issues with their services. Our networks team have been unable to access the site since the outage was reported due to the ongoing management of a safety related defect on the structure.
We’re working hard to restore services as soon as possible. We encourage our customers to sign up to Network Checker to receive status updates regarding network issues.”
Vodafone hasn’t detailed precisely what the “safety related defect” actually is, although we understand that work to restore the local mobile service is currently underway and due to finish on 11th November. But this assumes that no nasty weather events get in the way of being able to safely conduct the repairs (the original notification promised an update for 12th November).
Credits to forum member Bubbles121 for taking the picture and granting ISPreview permission to use it.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Similar to what is happening in Pickering North Yorkshire, O2 & Vodafone has removed the transmitter around the 1st of November leaving very little to no signal for the town. Can’t comment on Vodafone but O2 my provider gave no notification of this and when contacted said it should be available by the 20th with still no apology. If you want any compensation you need to contact us when signal resumes. Very poor customer service especially when they are closing traditional landline services.
I’ve found O2 very good at sending network updates by text and email if you register your location(s) of interest via their My Network app.
What they don’t seem to do is automatically send network updates relating to the billing address unless you’ve registered for them. Some other networks do.
@CJ in a Vodafone host area here and lately they’ve been useless providing updates.
I’ve had to go on Vodafone’s website to see work happening since the O2 app shows nothing at all. The work that has been happening was mostly for O2 too, with getting n28 on one site and B8 on another. Haven’t noticed any difference with another site that had upgrades.
I’m so fed up with Vodafone, I’m considering paying the early termination fee and moving provider.
If you are a O2 customer it should not matter you never get a signal anyway they are robbing scum
the amount of smarty referrals going on is unreal lol
Come on now, lets stop being silly.
There is *no* provider in the UK who can provide a useful service in any metropolitan area.
Anyone paying more that £10 a month for a mobile service is a fool
So reliant on mobile networks. When these fail, when the there’s no hardwire service available, what will we do in the case of an emergency.
Hear Hear! Clinging desperately to retain as long as possible my ADSI line which works in a power cut among other apprecialbe advantages. Especially as experience from major widespread power failures over the last 50 years is that sound standby installations do not reliably swing into action when needed – more recently this has been compounded by software not directly restarting after a power outage.
NB always wanted fibre to the premises but not as a sole line. I have assumed, since Broadband for the Rural North was first heard of ten years ago, that the basic state of the art was 1,000 megabits symmetrical and less than that only admissible if really cheap. I also took for granted it would be possible to have a POTS circuit as well with a copper wire bringing the electric power on it – which as dialling tone to a handset makes it possible to readily check the line. And I accepted that paying for two connections would not be as economical. However, BT struck a deal which is now nearly up that they would become the sitting tenants in their exchanges for thirty years ………..And the best I can hope for is a SIIM that will work on any of the remaining mobile networks and that my own back up batteries work.
There’s the satellite service on iphones, though it can take a while to connect.
Emergency Voice over Three 4G and EE 2G are still going in my case (Cully)
We have Three 5G and EE 4G+, so many people ending their contracts early and switching.
This issue seems to be affecting EE as well, been through the village twice today and both times I’ve had no signal at all. Wonder when this will be fixed.