Three’s mobile network is now back up and running - here’s what happened

Three’s UK network is back up and running, after outraged customers were left without signal or data for nearly 12 hours.

Customers posting on Downdetector posted shortly before 10.30am today (Thu 17 Oct) to say that the issues appeared to be fixed.

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If you were affected, the advice is to restart your phone and then signal and data should be working again across the country.

What happened?

Three’s UK network was down from Wednesday night at about 11.28pm until around 10.25am today,, leaving millions of customers without phone signal or internet connection for hours.

The issues were reported around the world and on a variety of different devices.

After initially denying that there was a network-wide problem at all, Three, which has approximately 10 million UK customers, said that “difficulties” were affecting “some” customers.

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A Three spokesperson wrote on the company’s Twitter account, “We’re currently experiencing technical difficulties with voice, text and data, meaning some of you will be experiencing intermittent service.

“Please accept our apologies, we’re sorting this out right now. Check back here for updates.”

Without signal for hours

Initially, Three users that complained were told that the issue was most likely to do with individual devices, or SIM card issues.

However, the problem was being reported everywhere, and nobody had been given a message to explain about any problems, leaving customers in the dark about why they could not receive texts, calls or internet data.

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Three’s website is currently down, with an error message posted on the landing page explaining that “essential maintenance” is being carried out and that the site “will be up and running soon”.

No further details are available at the moment.

Could you get compensation?

Many customers experiencing the outage will no doubt be hoping to get some money back to compensate for the inconvenience.

Ofcom rules state that mobile customers in the UK should automatically get refunds for when networks go down, rather than having to make claims for them.

The regulator’s website says that people using mobile phones “should be able to establish reasonably quickly what has gone wrong and, if it is a network service issue, tell you how and when it will be fixed.”

“Depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate for your provider to offer you some money back while repairs are being carried out.”

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