Millions of smartphone users in the UK lost their data services this morning after the O2 network suffered technical problems. O2 has 25 million customers, but also provides services for the Sky, Tesco, Giffgaff and Lycamobile networks which have another seven million users.

Users began complaining about the difficulties at 5:30 in the morning. An O2 spokesperson said a software issue was to blame for the outage. They encouraged customers to use Wi-Fi wherever possible, and apologised for the inconvenience caused.

Although most customers seem to be up and running as normal, the outage had knock-on effects for other services that use the O2 network, including Transport for London’s electronic timetable service at bus stops, which also stopped working.

www.bbc.co.uk/technews (5th Dec 2018)