After a huge outage, O2 4G data network has now been restored
O2 has now confirmed that their 4G data service network has now been restored and is working again, after a whole day without a 4G data connection.
No-one on the network was able to use their mobile data plans, having to use Wi-Fi or public hotspots, where possible.
Some users were also unable to make calls or texts. The service went to "No Service' or 'Emergency Calls Only', when we were checking devices on the O2 network, yesterday, although O2 said this was not an issue.
Sky Mobile, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks were also effected by the outage because they ran off of the O2 network, too.
It has been reported that the major worldwide outage was due to a 'software glitch' from Ericsson UK, its mobile network equipment supplier.
Ericsson president Börje Ekholm has provided some more detail as to why the problem happened:
"...main issue was an expired certificate in the software versions installed with these customers", according to BBC News.
In the UK, issues with the O2 network being down were first reported at about 05:30 on the morning of Thursday 6 December 2018.
Checking O2's coverage and network status page - status.o2.co.uk - also proved very difficult yesterday morning. We were checking throughout the morning and on most occasions, we were unable to load the page, the page was not available, and it just kept crashing. Checking this afternoon and this evening, though, shows that it's now fully accessible again.
O2 has issued joint statement with Ericsson, its mobile network equipment supplier.
Telefonica (which own O2), CEO Mark Evans, has said:
"I want to let our customers know how sorry I am for the impact our network data issue has had on them, and reassure them that our teams, together with Ericsson, are doing everything we can. We will continue to work with Ericsson, through the night, who have assured us that a full service will be restored for customers by the morning. We fully appreciate it’s been a poor experience and we are really sorry."
The CEO of Ericsson UK & Ireland, Marielle Lindgren, has also said:
"The cause of today’s network issue is in certain nodes in the core network resulting in network disturbances for a limited number of customers across the world, including in the UK. We have been working hard on resolving the UK data issue since early this morning. The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned.
Our priority is to restore full data services on the network by tomorrow morning. Ericsson sincerely apologises to customers for the inconvenience caused."
This morning, O2 Twitter page has said:
"Our 4G network was restored earlier this morning. Our technical teams will continue to monitor service performance closely and we're starting the full review to understand what happened. We are really sorry for the issues yesterday."
For more tech news and reviews, follow us on Twitter @Hart_Pro_Tweets #HartleyProductions and Like us on Facebook and Instagram @HartleyProductionsOfficial. As always, keep checking back on hartleyproductions.uk for more.