Mobile network Three’s outage last night left people unable to call 999 and many users this morning are still facing problems.
Three’s 10.5 million customers reported being unable to make any phone calls during the outage, with more than 10,000 people reporting problems on DownDetector.
On Friday morning some customers were still reporting problems, with Three admitting last night they had no time frame in which the problem would be fixed.
Today the network said it expects additional disruption due to Storm Éowyn.
The company said in a post on X on Thursday that it was ‘aware of an issue affecting a small percentage of voice services’, adding that its team was ‘working hard to fix this as soon as possible’.
‘We’re really sorry for any inconvenience caused. Data services and 999 calls are unaffected, please bear with us,’ they added.
However reports online show fuming customers reporting being unable to get through to emergency services despite the network’s promise.
One customer wrote on X: ‘Extremely disappointed with Three UK. Needed to call 999 emergency services tonight for an ambulance.
‘Could not get through due to your network being down! I understand that things happen but no access to emergency services? Where is your resilience! Really dangerous!’
Three’s 10.5 million customers reported being unable to make any phone calls during the outage, with more than 10,000 people reporting problems on DownDetector
The network later said it was investigating reports of customers being unable to access 999, and told users to use their landlines or another network instead.
A spokesperson said in a statement: ‘We are aware of a number of reports that customers have not been able to connect to 999 calls. Data from the emergency services shows that normal volumes of 999 calls being placed via our network are being connected.
‘We are taking these reports very seriously and are investigating this urgently and we apologise if anyone has been unable to successfully contact emergency services.
‘While it is likely your call will connect correctly to 999, if you have any issues please try another network or landline. Please do not try and test 999 calls from your device as it may prevent genuine calls being answered quickly.’
Other customers reported missing medical appointments, with one writing the outage ’caused me to miss an important call from my cardiologist consultant yesterday afternoon.’
They added: ‘Now I have to go back to the bottom of the waiting list. Thanks for nothing Three.’
Issues are still affecting the network this morning, with one user writing: ‘It’s been more than 12 hours and this issue is ongoing, I’m still not able to make calls.’
Hotspots for outages included London, Manchester and Liverpool
Some outages were still being reported on Friday morning, with no timeline for when problems will be fixed
Customers first started reporting issues with making calls around Thursday lunchtime.
They took to social media in frustration after the network stated just a ‘small percentage’ of customers were affected.
This morning a Three spokesperson said: ‘Following an issue affecting voice calls yesterday, services have almost returned to normal overnight.
‘Our monitoring has picked up an issue with calls connected via WiFI which we are investigating urgently.
‘Today, we also expect to see an additional impact on our service due to Storm Éowyn in some areas. We have already deployed extra engineering resources and planning for these areas, so we can bring sites that are impacted back online as soon as it is safe to do so.
‘A normal volume of 999 calls were connected yesterday and our monitoring confirms the service is working fully this morning.
‘We continue to investigate the small number of reports that we received about 999 call failures. We apologise sincerely for the inconvenience caused by the issues on our voice network yesterday.’
