O2 users are not able to access data and 4G services on their phones, with problems reported since 4.45am this morning. Customers in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham, Croydon and Edinburgh have reported the outage. A statement on the O2 website said: “Our technical teams are investigating reports of issues when using data.
“Voice calls are working OK. Our technical teams are investigating. We apologise for any inconvenience. Updates will be shared here as songs they are available.”
The network also provides services to Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks.
When these networks are taken into account, up to 32 million customers are affected.
The Transport for London’s electronic timetable service at bus stops relies on the O2 network, so this service is also down.
TfL said: “The company that updates the data to our network of Countdown Systems is currently experiencing difficulties in providing this service.
“This issue is being investigated.”
O2 is the UK’s second largest network after EE.
Mark Francis tweeted: “There is no O2 network at all it seems, which basically means the world’s about to end right? Although must say it is strangely liberating at the moment.”
The network has not provided any information on when the service will be back up and running.
O2 has not said what is causing the fault on Thursday.
Sean Boocock wrote on Twitter: “@O2 Is there any issues at your end regarding data connection? Woke up this morning with no mobile data at all and I have turned mobile data off and also powered my device down and still no mobile data? Hope this can resolved quickly.”
One Twitter user wrote: “O2 network? Down? Really?!!!! @O2 appalling coverage all the time anyway, can’t wait to switch out my service provider.”
An O2 spokesperson said the network was continuing to investigate the problems.
He said: “We’re aware that our customers are unable to use data this morning. One of our third party suppliers has identified a global software issue in their system which has impacted us. We believe other mobile operators around the world are also affected.
“Our technical teams are working with their teams to ensure this is fixed as quickly as possible. We’d encourage our customers to use wifi wherever they can and we apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
Another said: “This is ridiculous apparently it’s the whole country I can’t just rely on wifi.”
The service status page of the O2 website added that “voice calls are working OK” and apologised for any inconvenience caused.
O2 said it would share further updates as soon as they were available.