Outbound Mobile Calling Problems Strike EE’s National UK Network UPDATE8
Some customers of mobile operator EE (BT), as well as those on other networks who might be trying to contact them, are currently experiencing a partial service outage that is disrupting their ability to make calls (others complain they also can’t receive calls). The operator has declared this to be a priority 1 incident. The issue also seems to be impacting some landline calls.
The sporadic problem, which doesn’t seem to affect everybody, appears to have started at around 11am and will have also been felt by those on EE’s virtual (MVNO) operators (Spusu, Lyca Mobile etc.). The issue does not appear to be impacting Wi-Fi Calling, text messaging (SMS) or 4G and 5G data (mobile broadband) connections.
A spokesperson for EE said: “We’re currently addressing an issue impacting our services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused; we’re working urgently to fix this issue and will provide a further update as soon as possible.”
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Calling problems on mobile operators can often be complex due to how call routing is handled and the issue of who actually controls your number – hint: it’s not always your current mobile operator (try a network lookup).
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 6:54am
The outage was finally resolved just after 9pm last night. A spokesperson for EE said: “Following a technical fault impacting voice services on our network earlier today, we have now resolved the problem and the service is running as normal. We sincerely apologise and recognise the inconvenience this may have caused.”
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 9:25am
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Despite earlier claims of the issue being resolved, we are seeing a rise in complaints about the same issue as people wake up to a new day, albeit not to the same level as yesterday, but enough to be noticeable.
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 10:57am
Calling complaints are rising rapidly again, with many saying that the same issue has reoccurred. We are attempting to get some clarification from EE.
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 12:22pm
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Industry sources have confirmed that EE are aware that the issue has returned and say they’re “investigating“, although for some reason they still haven’t acknowledged this in public or responded to our comment request. Communication seems to be something that EE needs to improve.
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 1:36pm
We’ve finally got a response. A BT spokesperson said: “Following yesterday’s technical fault, we are currently experiencing some voice call issues today. The impact appears to be less widespread but we are working to resolve this as soon as possible and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
UPDATE 25th July 2025 @ 2:11pm
According to our sources, EE are now attempting to reboot some unspecified equipment and are reintroducing some interconnects in the hope that it may restore services, although we’ve not seen any big change just this moment.
UPDATE 26th July 2025 @ 7:59am
As the morning of the third day begins, we’re already seeing the now usual early hours rise in calling complaints begin to creep up.. again. Quite hard to believe that this is still going on and with only the most minimal of communication from EE. Sadly, poor communication during service outages remains a hallmark of this industry, particularly among several of the biggest players. Ofcom has done little to force an improvement in this area.
UPDATE 27th July 2025 @ 8:20am
A small portion of people are still reporting calling problems today, but it’s no longer at a level that would necessarily be considered well above normal. EE did furnish us with the following update yesterday afternoon, although I didn’t post it until now due to the need for family time (I’m not a robot and require rest).
A BT spokesperson said (yesterday at 2:25pm):
“Following a further fix overnight to a technical fault impacting voice calls on our network, we’ve been monitoring the situation throughout the day and services have been running as normal. We continue to conduct enhanced monitoring to prevent recurrence. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this issue has caused.”
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.
@Mark Thanks for the excellent reporting that makes the actual problem clear, the major news sites are misleading with one even reporting it as “Phone networks down: EE, BT, Three and Vodafone all not working in mass outage”! Thanks for the no nonsense and no click bait reporting!
Actually the article headline isn’t correct. It wasn’t just outbound calling, inbound from other networks was also problematic.
If you have a ported EE number then your phone will be having issues on any network, so all networks are affected. For example if someone is calling from O2 to 3, the 3 customer will not be able to receive the call if the 3 customer has a number that was originally issued by EE even though neither of them are EE customers or using the EE network!
BT Digital Voice not working incoming or outgoing at 17:35.
It’s been affecting me on Wi-Fi calling. Everything has been restored apart from 150 as of 5 minutes ago.
My business landlines can’t reach any mobile – on any network.
Three mobiles here seem fine though.
BT Digital voice is also impacted by this
I did a couple of hours of driving today to help my elderly mother work out what was wrong with her phone.
It turns out it was the EE network. But they hadn’t gone out of their way to advertise it; like actually telling anybody or anything.
I diagnosed it with various SIM-swapping exercises but couldn’t find anything on their site, or on Twitter…
Before I found your page, I only knew that others were having the same problem by searching twitter for what other people were saying about @EE!
I use Lebara. My wife is in Sky, and we both had issues calling out.
By rebooting our phones the issue was sorted
I’m on Three mobile phone. I can’t call out.
My BT Digital phone can’t called my phone, or my Dad’s Vodafone mobile.
I first noticed the problem about 12noon today when I tried to call my mum from my phone (on EE) to her (on Vodafone). When I called on another phone Vodafone to Vodafone then it worked. Did the usual – Turn it off, take out sim card etc, still failed.
Went to twitter and was a couple of posts by that time, so new there was an issue. What surprises me is that EE’s responses were just copy/pasted all the same. And even now there is nothing of an update from them.
A couple of hours back, I simply turned my phone off for an hour, and hey presto, its workning again for me.
But for EE, this is NOT how to handle a P1 incident with NO adequate communications.
Yep, its borked again. EE are not even responding to X complaints about this issue at all today. Customer Comms suck.
I guess the signs are not good today, not just content with mobile outages with EE and others today, Starlink has gone down globally too.
3 key systems all went down almost simultaneously. That’s what you get when your back-end is held together by string and a prayer.
I guessing the IMS fell over again
Ive been having problems since june! with my landline and internet(bt) and mobile txts whatsapp and email, network was giff gaff which runs on (o2) swapped to Smarty which runs on (3) which had caused even more problems than giff gaff ever did, ive been saying for months to my friends there is tech issues going on and its effecting the normal tv aerial as i refuse to pay for sky, (tv licence enough thanks.) i think my friends think ive gone nuts.There is a problem.Thank you for this article, its proved im not going nuts.
It is the way number porting works across networks, customers who have ported from EE to Vodafone or Three may experience issues too.
The problem was within BT but it takes time to identity that this was the actual problem when EE to EE was fine. Particularly fuelled by speculation and reports on other networks. It is like and RAC/AA man attending a breakdown. Yes they listen to the customer first but they then have to approach it step by step logically so they don’t get misled.
Many people think that when they port their number it is simply transferred to their current network. That is not the case, the number effectively remains with the original provider with routing and lookups making it a lot more complex.
What annoys me is that with such centralised and critical infrastructure there are no automated routines to test and highlight issues quickly especially when they are total outages of functionality. Even if it was as crude as the team responsible having a draw of phones with different providers SIMs. It wouldn’t take that long just to check if their bit of the jigsaw was working or if fault reports spiked.
The fashion is to keep moving between providers, MVNOs and now Roaming providers. Each change not only increases the risks of porting but as highlighted here also the setup of your calls.
I for one will be keeping my number on the original provider so I don’t get these issues. If your provider gets too expensive buy the cheapest plan, get a dual SIM phone and buy a second data SIM from the best supplier for your use. Your phone number and your 2FA texts are probably one of the most important things in your life right now.
If you had an EE number and were on EE yesterday then you had the issues and could only call and be called by EE numbers, if you moved the number to another network then at least you could call other people.
Moving networks is the solution, not the problem.
Yes – at work we have one line sending calls via Colt and another via Swisscom. It’s helpful when situations like this crop up and let’s us collect a SIP debug.
Thank goodness for this site. Currently abroad so initially thought it was a roaming issue, then the phone had switched to Vodafone rather than EE, then I was out of ideas. Couldn’t call customer services, so headed here!
Definitely isn’t resolved and it definitely does affect 5G data
EE website service status reporting “all fine”
That’s false too
Probably a different issue. EE are upgrading approaching half its 5G NSA to NSA/SA and there will be issues as there are always on change. Whether it’s network , your device or the comparability or both.
The safest option is to set you phone to 4G if you are having issues.
Update i now cant call anyone on my bt landline at all, its getting worse not better, silly question but has a satellite be knocked out in space or something? Or is there a major issue with the telecommunications network? The issues seem worldwide.
Some provider sources are saying it is an issue with SIP trunking between BT/EE and the other networks. Hence ‘internal’ calls between customers on the EE network are not impacted.
It started working last night.
Then this morning it’s back to not working.
It appears to me like they are turning the system off to work on it.
I’m on Vodafone and cannot call EE – I’m getting a call failed (the same as yesterday!)
I am on O2. Can’t receive calls and can’t call Lebara numbers
I’m on TalkMobile and can’t call EE numbers, nor can they call me. So certainly not fixed for everyone. Shocking how something like this can be causing issues for what I consider quite a long time (in our second day already).
Get call failed from Vodafone to GiffGaff. Number was originally Orange/EE (07790). So the fault seems to be affecting transferred numbers as well
Again in the evening calls start working again on Three.
I’ve noticed some networks are talking about numbers that have been ported from BT/EE to other networks having problems. But my number isn’t ported at all and I’m getting the problems.
It feels like someone is shutting the network down for some reason and turn starting it back on in the evening. This is the second night this sudden recovery as happened in the evening.
Appreciated that it is affecting a lot of individual phone users, but what about all the critical infrastructure out there which is affected. So much has been moved of phone lines in recent times due to the PSTN switch off and using SIM cards now. Everything from adult social care systems to lift alarms etc.
Just a thought – I wonder if this number fiasco might have something to do with OFcom’s desire to stamp out spoofed caller ID’s? ‘Move fast and break things’ perhaps.
And yes my EE phone and other EE users I know have had problems since 11:00 on the 24th. My LL number was ported from BT PSTN to my ISP and uses VoIP. That seems to work OK.
Will businesses get redress for loss of sales?
Still not working correctly this morning
My calls do go through but usually drop out at some point
Data speeds are woeful, I’ve gone from being able to run the entire house from a hotspot to barely getting 5Mbps and that is intermittent
OH dear, the mighty BT is broken AGAIN. Let’s have a moment to chuckle, given the staunch BT loyalist statements on this forum in various stories against competition.
How embarrassing for the BT fan boys on this forum. No “BT Ivor” statement on here at time of writing, but even Big Dave, a BT loyalist, has been affected by outage.
Sheesh, all those BT engineers that BT Ivor once boasted about when comparing to ALTNETS (and to be fair IS one area where BT are ahead of ALTNETS in the FTTP space), and those “mature” monitoring systems that BT have developed and yet a major outage taking some time to fully resolve.
Now, you know FANNY likes to only deal with the facts, not emotional ties to any one specific operator, and Fanny will actually state that the EE network is the best mobile network in the UK overall, despite the outage….