Tens of millions of O2 customers were left without access to the network yesterday after a UK-wide outage. Were you affected by the downtime?
We’ve discussed whether we spend too much time our phones before, but do we realise just how dependant we are on our devices until the service is suddenly withdrawn?
When I woke up yesterday I had a notification on my phone I’d never seen before – it said that there was no access to data ‘in my area’.
We explain your compensation rights
I was in a bit of a hurry to make the train (no delays yesterday, you’ll be amazed to hear), so I didn’t really take too much notice of the problem. I then connected to the train’s wi-fi, so things carried on as normal as far as I was concerned.
When I reached the office I was surprised to find the data situation still hadn’t been resolved, but connecting to the work wi-fi soon solved that potential problem. So it wasn’t until a bit later on that the ongoing issues had an impact.
Outage Update: Our teams are working closely with one of our 3rd party suppliers who has identified an issue in their system which has impacted mobile services globally. This is our top priority and we are really sorry. Get updates here: https://t.co/5oS7qap2bj
— O2 in the UK (@O2) December 6, 2018
Making plans without a phone
I was off to a gig with a friend last night, and we ended up with a last-minute spare ticket. We offered it around to a few friends before leaving, but completely forgot that if anyone said yes we wouldn’t be able to arrange a time or place to meet them due to the lack of phone service.
O2 stated that the outage wasn’t impacting on voice calls, but that wasn’t the case for me – I had no network at all until late in the evening.
This led to a conversation I’ve had a few times before regarding social organisation – how did anyone manage before smartphones!?
I play football every Saturday which requires communication of the time and place every week, plus confirmation from a minimum of 11 people that they can actually play.
Smartphones have revolutionised the way things like this can be organised – I’m amazed when I think that prior to phones a manager would have to ring round each individual player’s landline – and hope they were in/picked up the message! Not to mention that they’d have to do it all over again if there were any changes.
Our response
With consumers more reliant than ever on acceess to the internet in their day-to-day lives, we’re calling on O2 to ensure that no-one is left out of pocket by yesterday’s outage.
Featured Comment
Alex Neill, Which? Managing Director of Home Products and Services said:
It’s right that O2 compensates its customers for the frustrating network failure suffered by millions of customers. Anyone who suffered out of pocket expenses should make a claim to their mobile provider.
In addition, O2 needs to give its customers reassurances that it is taking measures to stop this from happening again. Connectivity is now such an integral part of our lives, it is time for the regulator to consider whether it should introduce automatic compensation for the inconvenience caused by severe outages
Were you affected by the network outage yesterday? If so, did it disrupt your day-to-day life? And is the sudden loss of the service an example of how over-reliant we are on the internet and mobile networks to go about our daily lives?
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