Mobile Network Operator Three UK Suffer Calling and SMS Outage UPDATE10
Some customers of mobile operator Three UK (VodafoneThree) are this morning reporting yet another partial network outage, which appears to be preventing users from either making or receiving calls. The issue also appears to be disrupting access to Voicemail and extends to virtual operators too (e.g. iD Mobile, Smarty etc.).
The problem, which also appears to impact text messaging and follows after a similar incident at the start of this year (here), started at around 8am this morning and remains ongoing. Customers on Three UK that attempt to make a call will hear only silence and the call itself will not connect, but data (mobile broadband) connectivity does still function.
A spokesperson for Three UK said on social media: “We’re aware of an issue affecting voice services and are working hard to fix it. Data services are working normally. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.”
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UPDATE 10:06am
According to our industry sources, 3UK has informed their partners that 27% of their user base are being impacted by the fault and there is currently no estimated time for a resolution. But Down Detector is now starting to show a mild drop-off in complaints.
UPDATE 11:37am
Three have said that they’ve continuing to investigate the cause and have informed partners that “there is currently congestion on network components“. The operator has also introduced some changes to reroute traffic and thus reduce congestion on the working components, but problems remain for many customers (e.g. Voicemail does now seem to work, but you have to wait a few seconds longer for it to redirect you).
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The operator does say that data and SMS should both now be working (a few customers did have issues with these too) and the impact on emergency service calls continues to be assessed. But sadly they’ve not issued any new updates to consumers since earlier this morning.
UPDATE 12:23pm
A spokesperson for Three UK just posted another update, which doesn’t add much to the original one: “We’re aware of an issue affecting voice services and are working hard to fix it. Data services are working normally, so calls can be placed via third-party messaging apps. We’re really sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
UPDATE 12:54pm
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According to our sources, Three UK say they’ve observed a 84.48% degradation to call set up success over the past 1 hour – impacting 3G, 4G Voice and VoWiFi (Voice over WiFi / WiFi Calling). Since the start of these problems, this is said to have caused an overall degradation of 75.80%.
However, Three UK now adds that their engineers believe they may have identified a component causing the issue and are presently working on a plan to isolate it and then shut it down.
UPDATE 4:04pm
We’ve had another update from Three UK.
A Spokesperson for Three UK said:
“We’re continuing to work on an issue affecting voice services which started earlier today. A small number of text messages are also being affected by the issue. Data services are working normally, so calls can be placed via third-party messaging apps.
We know how frustrating this is, and we’re so sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
According to ISPreview’s sources, Three UK have seen a small reduction in call failures since the previous changes. The operator is now planning to restart additional components over the next hour, which should improve the current level of network congestion and restore more voice and SMS services.
UPDATE 5pm
We’re hearing that about 20% of Three UK’s customers on 4G may not have working SMS (text messaging), but there is at least said to be no impact to Emergency SMS. ISPreview’s sources also indicate that customers should avoid restarting their Smartphones, since if they do, then they may struggle to reconnect to the network and be left with no service.
So far this is turning into one of the worst days of mobile calling disruption that Three UK and their customers have ever experienced.
UPDATE 9:58pm
Many customers have had their service restored, but there are still quite a few experiencing ongoing issues. Further work is due to take place overnight and into tomorrow morning in order to fully restore the remaining services.
A spokesperson for Three UK said: “Following an issue earlier today, Voice and SMS services are now returning to near-normal levels. Data services continue to work normally and we’re monitoring the network closely. We understand how disruptive this has been and sincerely apologise for today’s inconvenience.”
UPDATE 26th June 2025 @ 7:06am
No further updates have been issued since late last night, but it’s clear a small percentage of Three UK’s customers are still experiencing calling problems this morning. We expect this to rise as more people wake up.
UPDATE 26th June 2025 @ 8:24am
Apparently, Three UK are saying that call failure numbers have reduced to less than 1% this morning – caused by one specific network node, which is now in the process of being restarted. Everything should thus shortly return to normal, we hope.
UPDATE 26th June 2025 @ 10:27am
Three UK appears to be informing partners that the issue is now resolved, although we are still seeing complaints. But the operator says that it should now be safe to restart your device in order to resolve any lingering issues.
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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Oh dear. One can only speculate. Just eight more years to go.
That didn’t take long to go to poo poo then. Model integration work
Just voice effected?, for me it’s a total loss of service just emergency calls only so even data is broken.
I wonder how the network integration is going?
I would assume they’ve barely started yet!
They’ve got to move off the Nokia core to Ericcson, as Nokia stopped making it. There will already be a migration in flight pre-vodafone merge.
(Voda use the same platform, though)
Here in Stirling city center it appears that 4G is also affected as I’ve been 3G only in areas that usually have 4G
I thought Three had switched all 3G off now.
@Anon no, Three still has a stupid amount of 3G up. I have to walk 15 minutes or so to my nearest 3G site but it’s still up.
I think it’s something like 5 3G only sites here
> I thought Three had switched all 3G off now.
Some of Three’s 3G cell sites are still active
In South Herefordshire on Smarty (@ now): 123 just silence; seems can’t ring a number when signal is 4G but can (at least occasionally) on H+
Yeah, my brother is that side and on Smarty and had no voice/text, I am North and my smarty was okay.
And this is partially why I won’t use Three… no reliability when this is probably the 4th time it’s happened in a year or something like that? I do love how the least reliable network has merged with the most reliable though.
I assume they’ll be adopting Vodafone’s core network when everything is eventually integrated and that’s probably way more reliable though.
Not again
Buisness account holder.
No voice services at all since 8am,is now 11:42 unable to connect to voicemail either. webpage http://mobile.three.co.uk/my3 has an ssl error common name invalid.
Started with just silence but after a phone reboot just get unobtainable tone for all numbers called
Things break but comms needs to improve massively, tbf when it works (99.9% of time) I have no issues with Three
Same here – 13 business sims – none of them working. The amount I must be losing I don’t know as it does not even connect to voicemail which has the backup voip number for people to call.
I’m done with three – this started last night about 7pm.
The have the nuts to offer me 20% off Vodafone Business broadband when I log in!
Wasn’t mobile.three.co.uk replaced by new.three.co.uk?
waited over 2 hours to talk to Business support on Whatsapp – only to be told sorry we are having problems – thanks for your patience and have a good day.
But it was nothing to do with the current problem. 1000% time to leave if they can’t even be bothered.
It actually started for me yesterday.
Oh dear. I have been bigging up Smarty to my son as I have had great coverage in and around the Yorkshire Dales recently whereas O2 coverage was poor. Data working but no calls or texts this morning on Smarty/ Three so I guess it’s always good to have two Sims and two different networks o your mobile for these occasional events!
Haven’t noticed. But with most Android users and now iOS users on RCS instant messaging even less are probably using ye old SMS!
I still use SMS, hate RCS, but I can see where it could be useful in this sort of situation. My brother used Faceache messenger to contact me yesterday, as his phone service went belly up. I only use Faceache messenger if I really have to.
I will absolutely guarantee betting on all my life savings here that as usual, 3 will not provide a technical reason for the outage or even a simple reason such as a server cocup or something then obviously no automatic compensation for a days service lost.
Same here, been struggling to connect since morning
Usual negative reaction by UK users, – expect or demand systems run seamlessly 24/7. Kit breaks down, software has bugs & glitches. Just accept nothing is 100% perfect, & get over it.
It will be fixed – soon.
Nothings perfect but 3 seem to be more prone to these problems than other networks.
But this isn’t the first fault even this month, and considering the scale being unusually large compared to other outages that normally occur (a single mast or region) this reaction is justified, it’s nothing about the way UK consumers are, it’s more about the sudden drop in quality thats affecting an entire country rather than a smaller isolated area.
There is no excuse for an outage on this scale.
As people are increasingly dropping landlines the reliability of the mobile networks becomes even more critical. As Far2329Light says a outage on this scale is inexcusable.
I agree, it is naff it happens.
But now, with a lot of people having home phones removed, the mobile is the only way of communicating for a lot of people. While home phones did go down now and again, they were pretty reliable. I have not had any problem with mobiles for a few years, but some people are saying this is the third time Three have had problems in a few months, that is not good.
Things are so complexed now and getting more complexed, that I think we will see more of these problems.
I have been stuck, trying to call my airline for a full day. I was able to call the non UK phone numbers for the airline with my ID mobile number. Until this morning, I couldn’t make any calls (three to three fine). I had to activate roaming on another phone to call them. I assumed this was a fault with the airline.
Are Vodafone trying to merge with 3 or are they just looking to put it out of its misery? 2nd time this has happened in less than a year.
Still not working thank god for the Vodafone esim
Used to be the best…
For the past year the worst..
Fingers crossed nothing happens with Vodafone tomorrow, a lot of masts are being updated from 8pm tonight until 8am tomorrow.
How do you know this? Interesting
Sounds like an area by area thing, I don’t see anything here.
@Toby Atkinson it’s on the network status checker on Voda website, you have to zoom out once or twice to get mast maintenance info
We lost data on Three from 8:30pm on 12th June in BS40 area (Burrington mast). They refused to acknowledge any problem even when I told them that the phone worked fine in all other areas. Used to be great now they are the worst. Luckily out of contract so Three SIM went in the bin.
Fascinating
Vodarubbish, i blame them.
I am on Smarty and all is well, but my brother who is also on smarty has no service apart from data.
@Ad47uk
Yawn!
My network has been down since yesterday evening, 07/24/2025. What happened? I can’t make or receive calls for 24 hours.
This problem is not new, we only use data in the N15 4LP region, the internet speed has dropped to the age of mourning, I think it will be 1 week, it says 4G in this way, but the speed is Edge speed.
Previously, we could get up to 800mbps speed with 5G in this region.
Stop using the Aldi supermarket network and join EE the most powerful network hardly any down time excellent coverage.
EE? The same EE that can’t even provide conference calling for business customers? Umm, no I need an actual phone network. 🙂
The one that turns the other person into a robot, with random dropouts. Yeah, really good!
I was mega absolutely right, no proper explanation for the outage and no offer of compensation at all. All into the pockets of the shareholders.
Today’s situation actually got me thinking…
I ported my parents numbers to 3 on Tuesday and then this happened. I’m aware no-one can provide a fault free service but the amount of time they (as people in their 70s) were without service wasn’t great.
I’d already moved them away from a traditional copper landline and moved them to a data only provider on FTTP telling them they can use their mobiles for voice calls but that isn’t actually the case.
I’m going to look at getting a voip provider as a backup so they’ll not be left without any options should this happen again. They missed calls from the doctors and pharmacy yesterday. Nothing life changing but just has got the wheel spinnng in my mind about the ‘what ifs…’
Be good if 3 actually shared what happened yesterday rather than a generic statement. I’d feel more confident if they could say we know what caused it and steps have been put in place
On Smarty. No calls all day yesterday and still no calls today. My partner, on Three, had service resumed last night.
Also on Smarty and calls and 123 resumed around 7pm yesterday.
I am on a MNVO who uses three mobile for their service and I had the same problems where I live in County Durham. No data, not being able to use my mobile for phone calls and messages if I went outside my home and down the street. Once I got near my home and my wi-fi kicked in I could use Wi-fi Calling and I was able to receive messages and make and receive phone calls no problem.
No I don’t want to see Susanna reids bikini photos.