The outage experienced by O2 is continuing into its second
day, despite the telecoms company insisting that the problem has been fixed in
many areas. The problem, which affected hundreds of thousands of users across
the UK, has meant that O2 users have been unable to make calls and send texts,
a serious matter for many business users that rely on the service.
According to the O2
service status website, 2G services are all now back up and running;
however users seem to be disputing this, if social networking sites are
anything to go by. Many users seem to have woken up this morning to find they
have no service at all.
O2 advise that whilst users should now have access to their
2G services, they should disable 3G on their handsets until the problem is
resolved completely. The problems began on Wednesday afternoon, when many people
began experiencing problems using voice and data services.
"Our 3G service is starting to restore and customers
should expect to see a gradual return of data services as the day progresses,”
O2 said on their service page.
"Customers affected may wish to try switching their
mobile phones off and on as service returns."
According to O2, there’s no geographical pattern to the
problem and it’s thought that people who use other carriers which use O2 masts
are also affected; these include Tesco Mobile and GiffGaff, according to the BBC.
"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," O2
said in a service update.
"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 telecoms company also said that users should try
switching their handset’s off and on again to see if this resolved the problem.
However, several users have told One Stop Click
this morning that although they can receive text messages and sometimes calls,
they can’t send anything at all.
O2 have a good reputation in general and are the least complained about telecoms company in the UK, according to Ofcom figures. It remains to be seen whether the firm will offer compensation to its users, many of whom have been left fuming by the lack of service.