Phone mast near me down for over a week. No signal at home. GL17

[Charles73]

A phone mast near me has now been down for over a week and I am unable to get any O2 service in my house, which I used to be able to. I have signal but no connection to the network and my phone shows the "Emergency calls only" status. The phone works fine when I leave the area and go somewhere that has network coverage again. The status page for my postcode GL17 says "Looks like a nearby phone mast isn’t working as it should, sorry. Our engineers will be on the case already, and your service might come and go until we fix it." This has been up since Saturday the 20th. Normally these issues have been resolved pretty quickly but this one seems like it's been put on the back burner so to speak.

If I leave my house and walk down the road a bit I can pickup signal again, so there is some coverage here, but obviously I am unable to use my phone at home. WhatsApp is only good for friends and family calls; if anyone else wants to get hold of me at home it's now not been possible for over a week. It's also affected things like 2FA for online banking and transactions as I can't receive the text messages and so I am unable to do things like that from home now.

It's getting to the point where I'm having to consider swapping to another provider as I have no idea when this might be fixed or if it even is being actively fixed. How long do these things normally take? In the past it's usually never been more than about 24 hours before a fix.

[Cleoriff · Accepted solution]

@Charles73 

Have you tried Wifi Calling? https://www.o2.co.uk/connectivity/wifi-and-4g-calling 

Download the My O2 app where you can report issues and get updates

https://www.o2.co.uk/apps/my-network 

[Enlli]

You mention swapping providers. 

Just to say over the past year both EE and Vodafone have had prolonged outages where I live. 

As mentioned, if you have problems at home then WiFi Calling should help.

Mine is permanently on for both EE and O2

Guide: Do you have poor coverage / signal Indoors? This may help Explain / resolve it 

[Charles73]

I hadn't. Thanks for pointing that out, didn't even realise it was a thing. Just enabled it in my settings. Hope that works until the mast gets sorted out.

[Charles73]

I was with Virgin Mobile before I moved to where I am now and with them, oddly I could get reasonable mobile internet but no calls and texts. I swapped to O2 and it's pretty much the reverse situation, but a lack of mobile internet at home isn't an issue, as of course I use my home internet/Wi-Fi. By far the worst provider I have used so far is giffgaff, absolutely terrible service, and that was at my old address in the middle of a city where coverage was not an issue. That was a few years back, whether they're any better these days I don't know.

[japitts]

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@Charles73 wrote:

I am unable to get any O2 service in my house, which I used to be able to. I have signal but no connection to the network and my phone shows the "Emergency calls only" status

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If you have signal, you have a network connection.

What is happening here, is that your phone is seeing an alternative operator available, and offering you emergency calls.

Prolonged outages occur on all networks from time-to-time, depending on the nature of the fault.

[japitts]

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@Charles73 wrote:

I was with Virgin Mobile before I moved to where I am now and with them, oddly I could get reasonable mobile internet but no calls and texts

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There's only 4 network operators in the UK, everyone else is an MVNO who "piggyback" one of thise 4.

Virgin Mobile historically used EE until moving to VF in 2021. With the UK-JV between Telefonica & VM, everyone was then moved to O2 from 2023 onwards.

GG is a budget-O2 MVNO.