O2 down for pars of east london and kent?

[Anonymous]

Hello guys. Apparently o2 is down. Got 2 phones, checked them both at 6am coz i couldn't send txts and when i restarted phone, no signal no nothing. did same on other.
Their status page for postcode checker says its fine..updated hourly but not for past 3 hours and the msg below is
May 17, 2011
12:50 am
2G and 3G Service Interuption
We have identified a connectivity issue on our network which has affected both 2G and 3G service in parts of East London, North London and Kent. Customers in these areas may be experiencing difficulty in making or receiving mobile calls, texts or using data. Our Engineering team are working on the problem as a priority in order to resume full service as soon as possible.
So dont worry too much...as long as it comes back. So...yep Im worried

[Anonymous]

In the future could you not have set up a temporary roaming arrangement with another network provider to have maintained a service. Surely extra capacity could be installed with a partner as an insurance for such an event in the future. That exchange problem could have been a major fire, which would have left part of the O2 network out for weeks ????

[sheepdog]

I'm sure a long time ago (late 90's) you could do this by manually selecting the network. Of course you'd then be subject to an additonal charge. Think it fell out of favour due to phone locking and the mass market increase of PAYG coupled with the increased coverage.
But, maybe its not practical as o2 proved they could set up a temporary mast as per the Royal Wedding to cope.

[perksie]

But, maybe its not practical as o2 proved they could set up a temporary mast as per the Royal Wedding to cope.

How long did that take though?

[Anonymous]

I am no way an expert on mobile phone networks, but if the exchange had been totally destroyed, O2 would have had to re-connect every single base station on their affected network to another exchange, or exchanges. I would not know what the software implications could be for this to happen at these other exchanges either. I understand that least one of the major mobile networks run over BT provided links using a packet switching system, in which case maybe if O2's network was also provided in the same way, then base stations might be re-directed to their other exchanges fairly easily.