O2 apologises as data outage affects millions

Written by Hannah McGrath

6/12/2018

O2 is investigating a data outage across its network which has left millions of users unable to send and receive messages or access the internet from their smartphones.

The telecoms network said a software issue has been identified as the cause of the data services failure which has affected customers of O2 as well as Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Lyca Mobile and GiffGaff, which all use O2’s infrastructure. O2 has 25 million customers in addition to 7 million at networks that rely on its infrastructure.

In a statement posted to Twitter, O2 said: “One of our 3rd party suppliers has identified a software issue in their system. Our technical teams are working extremely hard to resolve this. We'd encourage you to use Wi-Fi wherever you can and we are really sorry.”

Customers reported experiencing issues accessing the internet at around 5:30am this morning.

O2 has also said other mobile operators around the world have also been affected by the glitch “which has impacted mobile service globally”.

GiffGaff customer, Camilla Capece, said: “I have had no internet connection whatsoever since 6am this morning and no facility for sending text messages – nothing. I have colleagues who have been similarly inconvenienced. It’s outrageous.”

The telecoms giant has asked affected customers to keep an eye on their status checker for updates as they work to resolve the issue.

An earlier post on the company’s social media account read: “We are aware our customers are unable to use data this morning. Our technical teams are working on the issue with high priority. We are really sorry and working as hard and as fast as we can to fix this.”