O2, Virgin, Tesco, EE, Three and GiffGaff down as millions struggle to work from home
GIFFGAFF, O2, EE, BT Mobile, Three, and Vodafone went down today - just as millions of people are self-isolating or working from home due to coronavirus.
All of the companies confirmed customers may experience problems making and receiving calls, although most say the issues are resolved as of this afternoon.
Tesco Mobile and Virgin Media also appeared to be impacted, according to monitoring website Down Detector.
It comes as workers across the country are self-isolating to avoid against spreading coronavirus - and many will be relying on broadband and mobiles to carry on working.
On the mobile front, there were 1,223 reports of problems at the height of the issue this morning at O2, while Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile, which piggyback off O2's network also experienced issues.
Down Detector reported 247 issues at Giffgaff and 405 at Tesco Mobile.
An O2 spokesperson added: "Today the industry experienced an issue that meant some calls between different networks were unable to connect.
"Specifically, O2, Vodafone and Three were unable to connect to EE and EE customers were unable to connect to O2, Vodafone and Three."
A Three UK spokesperson added: "We are aware of an issue affecting around 3 per cent of voice calls. We apologise for any inconvenience and our team is working to fix this ASAP. The rest of the network is stable."
Vodafone says around 9 per cent of voice calls on 3G weren't going through, although adds that the problems have now been fixed.
But Openreach, which provides most of the broadband cables around the UK, told The Sun it's confident the network can handle home-working on a mass scale.
It said: “The types of applications that people use heavily in the evenings at home – like Facebook, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky Go etc - use more bandwidth than typical working tools like emails, document collaboration software or even voice and video conferencing.
"As an example, the Liverpool versus Everton match, which was streamed live by Amazon Prime in December, drove significant peaks in traffic over our network without causing any major issues for our customers."
EE also told us this was not related to any increase in calls created by a rise in working from home.
'There's something weird going on with the phones'
Affected customers took to social media this morning to report the outage. One person tweeted: "At least here in Leeds (UK), some cellphone companies are almost down. I use @O2 and @EE on my work phone and @VodafoneUK on my personal phone, and all of those companies phones can barely complete a call.
"There's something weird going on with the phones over here."
Another wrote: "Oh god not there's a virus in the tech! @O2 I can't make or receive calls!! Super worried that none can get in touch with me. #virus #o2down"
Someone else said: "@EE can you tell me if there are network probs today? Whenever I try to dial out it says call failed."
Another wrote: "Working from home becomes increasingly more difficult when your internet keeps dropping out!
"@virginmedia sort your life out. Seriously, some people trying to be professional."
Telecoms providers have recently come under fire for upping prices, with Virgin Mobile hiking costs by up to £80 a year for 140,000 customers.
Sky is upping prices by up to £72 a year in April.
BT is also hiking mobile, broadband and home phone prices by up to £11.40 year this month.