Cellular network operator O2 on Friday said its data networks had been restored after millions of smartphones across the UK and Japan were taken offline yesterday (via BBC).
A statement on its website said the 4G network was finally working again, after having been affected from about 05:30 GMT on Thursday.
Earlier, mobile network equipment supplier Ericsson said that an expired certificate was the reason behind the outage, which also created problems in several other countries. Ericsson UK boss Marielle Lindgren said the "faulty software" that had caused the issues was being decommissioned.
Both O2 and Ericsson issued a joint apology to millions of customers hit by the disruption. "I want to let our customers know how sorry I am for the impact our network data issue has had on them, and reassure them that our teams, together with Ericsson, are doing everything we can," said O2 boss Mark Evans. "We fully appreciate it's been a poor experience and we are really sorry."
O2 is owned by Spain's Telefonica and has the UK's second-largest mobile network after British Telecom subsidiary EE.
The company said voice calls were not affected by the problem, but some O2 customers said they could not make calls or send texts, despite having cellular reception.
The outage also had knock-on effects for other services that use the O2 network, such as Transport for London's electronic timetable service at bus stops, which stopped working for most of Thursday.
Top Rated Comments
Luckily for me I am on both Vodafone and o2 so minimal impact but it does just show how reliant we are now on being able to access internet services.......rewind 15 years....you were lucky if you could receive texts let alone look at what some dog or cat is doing on insta :)
(FAO) 'Men escaping constant annoying trivial family calls' dept
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My main issue with O2 is that they refuse to get on the eSIM bandwagon (in the UK at least as O2 in Germany has support for it) meaning the iWatch is only supported by EE and Vodaphone but you need to be on a contract phone with either of those carriers. If I could just add an iWatch to my current set up I'd be in an Apple store in a flash!