The Scotsman

Millions of O2 customers left offline by data service outage

● Ericsson fault with software leads to major dropout on mobile network

- By MARTYN LANDI

Millions of O2 customers have been left unable to get online as a major technical fault crippled the mobile network.

The difficulti­es in the UK were first reported about 5:30am yesterday.

A fault issue with Ericsson software was confirmed to be to blame.

O2 chief executive Mark Evans said the firm would work with Ericsson overnight to resolve the problems, which left customers unable to access data services on their smartphone­s.

Mr Evans said Ericsson had given assurances a full service would be restored by this morning.

Ericsson UK boss Marielle Lindgren said the “faulty software” that had caused the issues was being decommissi­oned.

An expired software certificat­e has been credited as the fault.

O2 has 25 million customers and also provides services for the Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks, which have another seven million users.

In a statement released last night, Mr Evans said: “I want to let our customers know how sorry I am for the impact our network data issue has had on them and reassure them that our teams, together with Ericsson, are doing everything we can.

“We fully appreciate it’s been a poor experience and we are really sorry.”

Theservice­statuspage­ofthe O2 website said “voice calls are working OK” and apologised for any inconvenie­nce caused.

Services such as bus timetable informatio­n were also affected, while many businesses faced disruption. Spain’s Telefonica owns O2, which has the UK’S second-largest mobile network after EE.

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at uswitch.com, said: “O2 users affected by this mobile

data outage will understand­ably be concerned and frustrated. While it’s positive that voice calls are still up and running, without a projected timeframe for a fix, this is a worrying situation for a large proportion of O2’s millions of UK customers.

“Customers who are suffering can keep a track of this incident using O2’s own network status checker and ask the provider to keep them posted.

“In the meantime, O2 customers can still place and receive calls, but will have to resort to using wifi if they want to get online. For the millions of users who are out and about and rely on smartphone maps to get around, it’s worth considerin­g that apps like Google Maps allow customers to download maps on wifi and view them offline.”

 ?? PICTURE: GETTY IMAGES ?? 0 O2 has 25 million customers in the UK who were affected
PICTURE: GETTY IMAGES 0 O2 has 25 million customers in the UK who were affected

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