For over 24 hours users of mobile phone services in the U.K. and other countries have been experiencing major disruption. The service, O2, has 25 million customers and it additionally provides services for the Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks. 02 is owned by Spain’s Telefonica, and it is the second largest mobile network in the U.K. after EE (which is part of British Telecom). As well as people with 02 services abroad, the glitch also affected Japanese smartphone users on the SoftBank network. Furthermore, several telecommunications firms around the world, mainly situated in Asia, are rumored to be experiencing similar problems.
It is thought, as the Financial Times reports, a software issue in systems provided by Ericsson caused the major disruption early on December 6, 2018. The problem apparently relates to certain nodes in the Ericsson core network.
In relation to the disruption, O2 and its mobile network equipment supplier Ericsson have jointly issued a joint apology to the millions of customers hit by disruption to its data services, according to the BBC. However, neither Ericsson or O2 have given any indication of when the problems might be fixed.
“We’re aware that our customers are unable to use data this morning,” O2 has stated (quoted by PC Mag). “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.”
