Tens of thousands of Vodafone customers in the UK have reported they could not access services including the internet and making mobile phone calls.
Consumers started reporting problems on the website of the outage monitor Downdetector from about 3pm on Monday.
By 3.20pm the number of reports of service disruption had risen to more than 135,000. According to a breakdown of the reported incidents, more than two-thirds related to customers who have Vodafone’s internet broadband services to their homes.
Almost a quarter of reported incidents related to mobile internet access, and about 8% of Vodafone customers reported not being able to make calls because they had no mobile signal.
Some customers said they also could not access the Vodafone app or website.
The problems appeared to be widespread, with reports in cities including London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester.
The outage was only affecting Vodafone’s customers in the UK, and is understood not to relate to a cyber-attack.
Vodafone said connectivity returned to its network late on Monday afternoon, but did not say what had caused the outage.
“This afternoon the Vodafone network had an issue affecting broadband, 4G and 5G services,” said a spokesperson for VodafoneThree. “2G voice calls and SMS messaging were unaffected and the network is now recovering. We apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers.”
Downdetector was still showing about 4,000 reports of problems shortly after 6pm.
Vodafone has more than 18 million customers in the UK and has also been pushing into fixed-line home internet provision with more than 700,000 broadband customers.
The telecoms company and its former rival Three completed a merger of their British operations in May, creating the UK’s largest mobile provider with more than 27 million subscribers. Customers of Three UK did not appear to be affected by the outage affecting Vodafone.
Downdetector also received incident reports across other big networks, although the number of reports so far remain relatively low. Spokespeople for BT, which also owns EE, and VirginMediaO2 said their networks were operating as normal.
Sabrina Hoque, a telecoms expert at Uswitch.com, said that if outages are severe and persist customers have rights under regulations enforced by Ofcom, the telecoms regulator.
“Outages have been reported across multiple networks across broadband and mobile services,” said Hoque. “Outages are a really frustrating experience for customers, especially when it’s not clear how long it could last.
“If your broadband connection goes down for more than two days, you could be entitled to compensation of £9.76 for each calendar day that the service is not repaired.”
Ofcom advises that compensation for mobile signal outages is “dependent on the circumstances”, but in some cases customers may be entitled to a refund or account credit.
