Three mobile phone services down for hours, impacting thousands of customers across the UK

The problems were first raised early on Thursday morning (14 October) and by 8.30am over 1,398 customers had reported an issue to Downdetector, a website that offers a real-time overview of outages. Hundreds of complaints continued to roll into the site at midday before Three confirmed the problem had been fixed.

You can check the status of Three's service in your area by using the service status tool. 

If you're unhappy with your mobile phone service and you're thinking of switching, see our Best Sim Only Deals guide and our Cheap Mobile Finder tool to compare the best handsets, sim-only and bundled handset and contract deals.

Three network down

A number of people had taken to social media to complain about the network outage. Here are some of the reports we saw on Twitter:

You may not be entitled to compensation but you can still complain

If your mobile network service stops working, you should report the fault to your provider. Under Ofcom rules, the regulator states that if your provider fails to repair a fault by the date promised, or you are unhappy with how long it is taking, you can follow their formal complaints procedure.

You can complain to Three if you've been inconvenienced by the outage, and if you're unhappy with the response you get, or you don't get one within eight weeks, you can take escalate the complaint to the Communications Ombudsman. 

What does Three say?

A Three spokesperson confirmed to MSE this afternoon that issue had been resolved, adding: "Three’s services have now been restored for affected customers. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the issue."

According to Three, the outage affected 30% of calls on the network but it said all customers should now be able to make and receive calls as normal.

Three first acknowledged the issue this morning on their social media page: 

At 12.23pm, it added: