Outage for Three network

SiliconChip

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdx1l755wdo

My SMARTY SIM has been unable to make or receive calls today, texts appear to be working only intermittently as is WhatsApp. On the plus side internet access seems to be OK still, which is good as I use Three mobile broadband. Luckily I have a spare phone with a Lebara (Vodafone) SIM for just this eventuality.

PHK

Reports that despite Threes assurance 999 is affected and it's more than some customers. 

Apparently Three didn't identify the fault until between 5/6pm. 

OfCom under pressure to be firmer with providers who don't keep consumers updated. 

reddwarf2002

999 calls not working is unforgivable. Hopefully no harm came of it.

PHK

Still not working this morning. Parts of the website also unavailable and replaced by a statement acknowledging that they are urgently investigating the 999 issue. 

Years of underinvestment in the network seem to be showing. 

SiliconChip

Mine is working again today, and Three have this message on their Network Status page (which is an update from what was shown an hour ago):

Following an issue affecting voice calls yesterday, service have returned to normal overnight. We continue to monitor and review all services throughout today to ensure full stability. However, today we 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.

PHK

It’s interesting that they say a normal volume of 999 calls. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a problem because there may have been an abnormal number trying to make calls. 

Neil_Jones

I was under the impression 999 calls are network independent, and if you need to call that number the phone should work on any network it can see regardless of who you're with?

SiliconChip

Neil_Jones said:

I was under the impression 999 calls are network independent, and if you need to call that number the phone should work on any network it can see regardless of who you're with?

I was also under that impression. Of course, I didn't try to test it while I had no service, but perhaps the people reporting an issue live in an area where they only have access to the Three network.

simax

Neil_Jones said:

I was under the impression 999 calls are network independent, and if you need to call that number the phone should work on any network it can see regardless of who you're with?

This is correct. As long as an active sim is in the phone, it’ll connect to any available network for 112/999.

PHK

Neil_Jones said:

I was under the impression 999 calls are network independent, and if you need to call that number the phone should work on any network it can see regardless of who you're with?

That’s almost correct. We have what’s called emergency roaming so that you automatically roam onto another network to make an emergency call. (iPhone users can also alert the emergency services via satellite if there’s no signal at all)

The problem here was that there was a signal from Three and you could initiate a call but the call didn’t go through to the emergency services. It went through to static or white noise because of the fault at Three. 

SiliconChip

PHK said:

Neil_Jones said:

I was under the impression 999 calls are network independent, and if you need to call that number the phone should work on any network it can see regardless of who you're with?

The problem here was that there was a signal from Three and you could initiate a call but the call didn’t go through to the emergency services. It went through to static or white noise because of the fault at Three. 

Are you sure of that? Although I didn't try to call 999 for obvious reasons all other calls that I tried to make resulted in complete silence.