Thousands of UK customers report broadband issues

1000’s of Vodafone clients throughout the UK have reported its companies are down.

Downdetector, which displays internet outages, confirmed greater than 130,000 folks had flagged issues affecting their Vodafone broadband or cell community on Monday afternoon.

In keeping with its web site, the agency has greater than 18 million clients within the UK, together with practically 700,000 house broadband clients.

In an up to date assertion on Monday night, Vodafone apologised to clients and mentioned its community was “recovering”.

“This afternoon the Vodafone community had a problem affecting broadband, 4G and 5G companies,” an organization spokesperson mentioned.

“2G voice calls and SMS messaging had been unaffected and the community is now recovering.

“We apologise for any inconvenience this triggered our clients.”

It comes after folks on social media mentioned they had been struggling to entry Vodafone customer support operators, amid ongoing points affecting cell information and broadband.

Many additionally mentioned they’ve had issue accessing the corporate’s web site and app, which usually enable folks to view the standing of its community companies.

Prospects have additionally taken to social media to complain of “full outages” of their space.

The problems seem to have begun for patrons shortly after 15:00 BST.

Web monitor Netblocks said in a post on X that reside community information confirmed Vodafone was experiencing “a nationwide outage” impacting each broadband and cell information.

Some clients expressed being doubly pissed off by not with the ability to entry their Wi-Fi or cell information.

“Type it out quickly please,” wrote one pissed off X consumer – who mentioned they had been having to make use of a espresso store’s Wi-Fi to entry on-line companies, with out the means to take action utilizing their cell information or broadband.

One other mentioned they had been self-employed and couldn’t work due to the outage, including: “By no means regretted extra having my cell and broadband on the identical community.”

The problems are additionally understood to have impacted some Vodafone retailers.

The problems affecting Vodafone companies have additionally impacted clients of different telecoms companies that use its community.

Downdetector noticed an identical spike in studies on Monday afternoon from customers of the cell community Voxi, which is owned by Vodafone.

Lebara, which piggy-backs off Vodafone’s community, has additionally been affected by the corporate’s outage.

“Outages have been reported throughout a number of networks throughout broadband and cell companies,” mentioned Sabrina Hoque, telecoms skilled at Uswitch.

These, she added, will be “a extremely irritating expertise for patrons, particularly when it isn’t clear how lengthy it may final”.

Vodafone has not but mentioned how lengthy it expects its outage to final – although its web site since seems to have come again on-line.

Cloudflare Radar, which tracks and shows patterns in world web site visitors, mentioned in a post on Bluesky earlier it had “successfully dropped off the web, with site visitors dropping to zero”.

The corporate has additionally not mentioned what triggered the difficulty affecting its networks.

“Incidents like this are sometimes attributable to a technical fault or configuration error reasonably than a significant cyber-attack, so till extra particulars are confirmed it is best to not speculate,” mentioned Daniel Card, a cyber skilled with BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

“Having groups able to diagnosing and responding quickly to community failures is vital to sustaining public belief and protecting the UK’s digital infrastructure operating easily.”

Further reporting by Ewan Somerville.