O2 customers unable to use mobiles (From News Shopper)

O2 customers unable to use mobiles

8:55am Thursday 12th July 2012 in Business News © Press Association

HUNDREDS of thousands of O2 customers are still unable to use their mobile phones after the operator's network crashed.

Engineers worked through the night to fix the fault but many mobile users are facing a second day of being unable to make or receive calls.

The network's text messaging service is also affected by the fault, while customers have had issues accessing data services such as the internet.

Network problems started to be reported early on Wednesday afternoon, but it not yet know how many of 02's 23 million UK customers have been affected.

A company spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that the problem with our mobile service is due to a fault with one of our network systems, which has meant some mobile phone numbers are not registering correctly on our network.

"We, and our central supplier, have deployed all possible resources and have been working through the night to restore service as soon as possible."

The spokeswoman said it was unclear exactly how many have been affected by the nationwide problem, but estimated it was "thousands" at least.

A message on O2's Twitter feed read: "Our engineers are doing their level best to resolve the current network issue.

"Apologies for the inconvenience caused."

No timescale for the repairs has been given.

Tesco, which uses O2's masts for its Tesco Mobile network, confirmed that some of its customers were being affected this morning.

"We are currently seeing a problem on our network affecting some of our customers." a spokeswoman said.

"There is an issue within part of O2's core network that is preventing some mobile phones from successfully connecting.

"We're sorry about the inconvenience this may cause our customers, and O2 engineers are dealing with the problem to restore full service as soon as possible."