02 customers experience network problems

Thousands of 02 customers were affected by a network problem yesterday.The company said about 10% of its customers had been unable to make or receive calls, or use data however, the cause of the fault was identified and fixed during the afternoon.

02 also issued the following Q & A:

Q. What has gone wrong?

A. One of our network nodes which help connect and manage traffic, failed at lunchtime today. This meant that a number of our customers have had difficulty connecting to our network to make calls or use data. A fix was found by 3.30pm and since then we have been reconnecting customers systematically. We are working as quickly as we can to restore service to everyone.

Q. Why are only some people impacted? A. The fault was on one of several nodes that help connect and manage traffic on the network, which is why only 10% of customers have been affected. To fully restore service a backlog of traffic has had to be processed following the fix.

Q. When will service be fully restored? A. Some people had their service restored from 3.30pm this afternoon when we began systematically reconnecting affected customers to the network. We are working as quickly as we can to restore service to all our customers.

Q. Is this the same fault as the one in July? A. No, the cause was different. However, it has had a similar impact on our customers, albeit fewer of them.

Q. Why did you not have the necessary resilience? A. We have extensive continuity plans which we brought into effect to restore service as quickly as we could. In this instance, a fix was found in three hours and we were able to start reconnecting customers systematically from 3.30pm this afternoon. However, are having to address the backlog of traffic to fully restore service.