Three’s UK mobile network has been down for several hours, pushing users on to social media to complain – if they are lucky enough to have WiFi service.
Details on what caused the outage were not immediately available as Three’s website is also down, and its Twitter accounts silent early on Thursday morning.
The Independent has contacted Three for more information.
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Welcome to The Independent's live coverage of the nationwide Three mobile service outage.
Here's our story on what we know so far (which isn't much):
Three has completely stopped working
No details are available on provider’s website, main Twitter page or its support accountThe customer support team on Twitter has replied to its first complaint, but users aren't happy.
A customer had complained they were unable to validate their email address.
Not everyone is furious about the outage, however.
Some Three users appear to be able to access broadband.
Three's Twitter account is still suggesting that it is a problem with individual users' phones or SIM cards – which doesn't seem to line up with the fact that the issue is being reported all across the country, all at the same time.
Reports of issues are rising rapidly, according to the site Down Detector. (Though that might just be a consequence of people waking up and realising their phones have stopped working.)
Three support account replies to customers
The Three Support account has started replying to affected customers, but only directly. Neither the official account or the dedicated support account have tweeted publicly about the issue at all.
Issues seen across entire country
The issue is happening basically everywhere, according to Down Detector.
Three account sends strange sassy tweets featuring GIFs
The Three support account is still sending sassy tweets:
And denying the issue is network-wide, suggesting instead that it's an issue with people's phones:
Three acknowledges problems
But it has also started admitting there is an issue affecting "some customers":
Outage reminiscent of O2 issues
The issue is reminiscent of the great O2 outage of December 2018. That was eventually traced to a software update, and the phone network blamed another company.
You can relive that here:
O2's phone network has broken
3G data, calls and texts are all brokenReports of problems rapidly rising
The number of reports of problems continues to rapidly rise on Down Detector. (Though, again, that might be because most people have been asleep.)
Official account starts to respond to problems
Three is yet to publicly tweet about the outage, but is now reliably responding to everyone that complains to say that it is aware of the problem and apologises for any inconvenience.
Three continues to blame phones and SIMs
That said, the account is still telling some people who complain that the issue could be with their phone:
Three finally publicly acknowledges issues
The main Three UK account has finally sent a public tweet, acknowledging the outage.
Official tweet prompts furious reaction
That post has not gone down well: more than 200 replies in the first 10 minutes it's been up.
Most are complaining about the fact that it took so long to acknowledge the fault – it's been nearly half a day since the issues started – and taking issue with the fact that the tweet describes the problems as leading to "intermittent service", when plenty of people are complaining that it is simply not working at all.
Official account suggests using other people's phones as a hotspot
As it continues to respond to complaints about the outage, one Three representative has suggested using someone else's phone – presumably one on another network – as a hotspot, to get on the internet.
Issues could be resolving
The number of reports going in to outage tracking website Down Detector appear to have started falling. That could mean that the network is coming back online. But it could also mean that people are tired of complaining...
Apology tweet receives furious reaction
Three's tweet – the first public admission there was a problem – was posted 20 minutes ago and has now received more than 400 replies. They largely look like this:
