O2, has it shit itself again or is just my phone?

[johnneycool]

Anyone having problems with O2 today? I've had no coverage since late morning with only emergency calls available.

[Tony Baloney]

O2 was down everywhere. Useless cnuts.

[ONeill]

Yep problems. If you text upside-down it works.

[cornerback]

http://news.o2.co.uk/2012/10/12/o2-network-distruption-12-october/

[Tony Baloney]

Still, will be looking forward to another free tenner off them. I thought my phone was bucked and ended up footering at settings throughout the day.

[Tony Baloney]

Is this scale of outage confined to o2 or do Vodafone users etc. get the same shite? Very poor network resilience from these clowns but no service round here for anyone else, so stuck with them.

[deiseach]

God bless ITV News:

[johnneycool]

I'm back up now! Could you get out of your contract for shit  like this i wonder?

[Tony Baloney]

Didn't notice anything wrong here in Omagh via GiffGaff, but O2's network seems to be having a habit of falling over if someone at their call centre has a sneeze at the moment.

I'm waiting for Orange/Everything Everywhere to roll out their 3G across the north - their plan is for them to have it done by the end of this year. They still only have GPRS in Omagh which is a joke.

I'd consider Vodafone but their EDGE/GPRS data service is poor, chokes regularly around mid-Tyrone and you'll only get any connection again if you turn the phone off and back on again. Their 3G is fine, but 2G data as noted above is crippled. Same goes for 3 - if you're outside their 3G coverage you fall back on to Orange's 2G network but you can't even use any data now on it, calls and texts only.

It's all a bit shite really. I regurlarly have to cycle the phone to pick up a mast. Not very 21st Century is it. There was talk about Vodafone and o2 sharing masts which might help. Doesn't help that o2 are so prone to these failures.

[EC Unique]

I'm Vodafone. Never any bother.

[Tony Baloney]

Didn't notice anything wrong here in Omagh via GiffGaff, but O2's network seems to be having a habit of falling over if someone at their call centre has a sneeze at the moment.

I'm waiting for Orange/Everything Everywhere to roll out their 3G across the north - their plan is for them to have it done by the end of this year. They still only have GPRS in Omagh which is a joke.

I'd consider Vodafone but their EDGE/GPRS data service is poor, chokes regularly around mid-Tyrone and you'll only get any connection again if you turn the phone off and back on again. Their 3G is fine, but 2G data as noted above is crippled. Same goes for 3 - if you're outside their 3G coverage you fall back on to Orange's 2G network but you can't even use any data now on it, calls and texts only.

It's all a bit shite really. I regurlarly have to cycle the phone to pick up a mast. Not very 21st Century is it. There was talk about Vodafone and o2 sharing masts which might help. Doesn't help that o2 are so prone to these failures.

Vodafone and O2 have a joint company called the Cornerstone Group to roll out new sites for base stations that both can use. I remember a press release a few months ago stating the future plan is for one network or the other to cover service operations depending on geography, I think O2 was to look after NI. At present current sites are still run by the operator.

T-Mobile and Three a few years ago formed a company called MBBL with the aim of mirroring the two network's 3G coverage but this applied only to Britain and not over here. When Orange and T-Mobile merged to form Everything Everywhere, they joined MBBL. T-Mobile's base stations were switched off back in April over here as Orange and T-Mobile's customers can roam now on each other's networks. Orange plan to have 3G at all of their 2G base stations up and running by the end of the year - they have submitted planning applications to have aerial upgrades etc. but I reckon at this stage they'll miss their target. The plan also involves making the masts 4G ready as well.

The problem with O2 is that while in the north they have done some coverage network upgrades e.g. rolled out 3G on 900MHz spectrum that most new smartphones can support, not to mention that their EDGE coverage has also improved, their network backbone is creaking at the seams. All the other networks had similar problems only a few years ago but have invested quite a bit to upgrade their infrastructure - Orange and 3 in particular - but O2 is owned by Telefonica (Spanish equivalent of BT or Eircom) who are mired in a sh*tload of debt and have no money to invest in upgrading O2 UK's infrastructure. Opening more base stations or upgrading them doesn't necessarily increase overall capacity and that's what crippling O2. More than likely that at some point in the near future Telefonica will have to sell off parts of their international portfolio and O2 UK & O2 Ireland could well be offloaded. Any new buyer would have to invest a lot of money to upgrade the UK network.

A few years ago O2 won well on it's 2G coverage and good value calls & texts offers (with 3G as an afterthought, they were hauled over the coals by Ofcom over their 3G coverage or lack of) and good customer service reputation, but since the smartphone became mainstream they've been struggling to keep up with typical customer demands.

o2 won a big proportion of the iphone market when the 3gs exploded and ultimately the unlimited data packages that were about at that time slaughtered them and usage has outstripped their investment.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Ya seems O2 was down, all my mates here in Liverpool were out of order today. To be honest my 3 network was briefly playing up this morning for an hour or two. I put it down to the weather.