The telecommunications network O2 has apologised after its service went down on Thursday afternoon, leading to thousands of complaints from customers across the UK who were unable to use their mobile phones.
People in the most densely populated areas of all four UK nations reported being unable to use their O2 devices, according to the online tracking service Down Detector. In response, O2 said its engineers were looking into the problem “as a priority” and later said it had been fixed.
The areas most affected areas included Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester, as well as south Wales, Belfast and most of south-eastern England, including London. Other areas, such as the East Midlands and the Leeds and Hull areas in Yorkshire, as well as north-eastern England and the south-west of England, around Bath and Exeter, and Norwich in Norfolk, also reported problems, according to Down Detector.
Reports of the problem started at about 4pm on Thursday. Among those who complained of poor service was the former Manchester United and England football player Gary Neville, who tweeted that the network was down.
Hey @O2 your network is down in Old Trafford . Not a surprise normally but it’s not match day !
— Gary Neville (@GNev2) October 4, 2018
An O2 spokesperson said: “Some customers may have experienced an issue when using their mobile earlier today. This was fixed within 40 minutes. Some customers may continue to experience some intermittent issues when reconnecting to the network. We’re investigating what happened and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
