Vodafone outage: Thousands of mobile and broadband subscribers report problems 

Tens of Vodafone customers have complained that they were unable to use services such as the internet and even make calls using their mobile phones in the UK. The outage monitor site, Downdetector, started receiving reports of the issues on the site as early as 3pm on Monday.

By 3:20 pm, the reports of disruption of services had increased to over 135,000. Based on a breakdown of the quoted incidents, over two-thirds involved the customers who subscribe to the internet broadband services of Vodafone in their homes.

Nearly a quarter of the reported cases involved mobile internet connection, and approximately 8% customers of Vodafone complained that they could not make a call due to lack of mobile connection.

Other customers also reported that they were also unable to access the Vodafone app or site. The issues seemed to be prevalent and were reported in such cities as London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester.

Vodafone had only lost its customers in the UK and is believed not to be connected to a cyber attack.

“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.”

About 4000 problem reports persisted on Downdetector even after 6pm. Vodafone had an excess of 18 million customers in the UK, as well as being exerting into provision of fixed-line home internet with in excess of 700,000 broadband users.

In May, the telecom firm and its previous competitor Three merged their British business in the UK to form the largest mobile provider in the UK with a subscriber base of over 27 million. There did not appear to be a similar impact of the outage of Vodafone on customers of Three UK.

Incident reports were also noticed in other larger networks on Downdetector, but the count of the reports is relatively small. BT representatives who also own EE and VirginMediaO2 representatives reported that their networks were functioning normally.

Telecoms expert Sabrina Hoque of Uswitch.com explained that in case the case of outages is severe and continuing customers have the following rights that are stipulated by regulations that are applied by Ofcom, a telecoms regulator.

According to Hoque, there have been complaints of outages in various networks in both the broadband and mobile services.

“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.”