Nationwide Outage. Any estimated fix time

Update to iDM’s service status and correction to the above post made

Please note:

Some customers are unable to make or receive calls. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

 

13:00 - Degradation to voice calls has decreased. As a result, most customers who previously experienced issues are now able to make and receive calls. 3UK are continuing to monitor. Thank you for your patience and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

10:15 - 3UK have identified some degradation to voice calls. As a result, customers may experience issues when trying to make and receive calls over 3G and 4G.

(only posting on here in case others either don’t know about the service status tab or they’ve not spotted the current yellow banner or if some are on mobile data only)

Daz_S wrote:

Daz_S wrote:

<snipped>

4G/LTE calls (via the LTE forcing app) are almost back to being like they are normally here, though the signal still isn’t back up to the normal whopping 1 bar of strength in the daylight hours and up until ~2am. 2x calls today and both said they couldn’t hear me in new locations around my property😤. So the (was going to say fun and games) hassle and frustration continues.

 

Oh okay, https://www.three.co.uk/support/network-and-coverage/coverage?tab=2

Following an issue affecting voice calls yesterday, services have almost returned to normal overnight. Our monitoring has picked up an issue with calls connected via WiFI which we are investigating urgently. Today, we also expect to see an additional impact on our service due to Storm Éowyn in some areas. We have already deployed extra engineering resources and planning for these areas, so we can bring sites that are impacted back online as soon as it is safe to do so. A normal volume of 999 calls were connected yesterday and our monitoring confirms the service is working fully this morning.  We continue to investigate the small number of reports that we received about 999 call failures. We apologise sincerely for the inconvenience caused by the issues on our voice network. 

 

I can see Sky news has also ran a story about 3UK stating customers may be affected by Storm Éowyn. Three and Sky also mentioned some losing the ability to connect to 999 yesterday - though neither Three nor Sky make any reference to the ‘other’ voice related outage (the one where many of us couldn’t make or receive a call over 4G - though I was able to prove this didn’t affect calls over 3G)

 

Regarding 3UK continuing to investigate small numbers reporting 999 didn’t connect, maybe 3UK should be looking at the fact that for those of us in a poor 4G signal area we have to set the phones to 4G only, thus I would guess to say the loss of 4G across the UK meant those phones did not drop to 2G which in turn meant they couldn’t dial 999. Actions have consequences - so sort the 4G and this’ll stop more of us manually changing the network connection mode to 4G only. Unless things have changed post 3G switch-off my understanding is that without 4G the 2G (via Vodafone) should allow a call to the emergency services to be made. Happy to be corrected.

 

But if Three is now correct and it isn’t all 100% sorted, why does iDM state this:

• Service Status.

 

Please note:

RESOLVED - Some customers are unable to make or receive calls, or access the iD Mobile app or My Account Online. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

 

Latest Updates:

24/01

08:30 - If you’re still unable to make or receive calls, please try restarting your phone, or toggling Airplane Mode on and off.

07:00 - We’ve had confirmation that the issue is now fully resolved and calls are functioning as expected. Once again, thank you for your patience and we apologise for any inconvenience this has caused you.

23/01

 

But mine isn’t back to its normal below par level and where is the

• WiFi not working correctly (unless this is 3UK only)
• weather related pre warning on iD?

 

(not picking fault, just merely pointing out conflicting information/statements and which one should we put our trust in)

 

That’s the first I’ve heard of Storm Éowyn potentially affecting services. There is still a small amount of degradation to VoWiFi and Voice calls, which might explain why your calls are still affected. This has been updated on the Service Status page, with updates at 10:15 and 13:00. Thanks!

Doh two spheres in a flesh coloured bag, thanks for looking anyway. I don’t see the point of trying to rewrite it now.

Yep apps seems to be all good still. I now don’t know if it was me force closing or you plugging it back in that made mine work.

Calls over WiFi (on the wife’s phone anyway) are not always coming through (she also had a no service message on her phone last night whereas mine (2 metres away) maintained a signal).

My 2 calls this AM were not working well at all over 4G only. Hope it continues to improve - you never know the masts serving my area might need their engineers out to them (it is rather windy here (or joy riders have crashed loads the wheelie bins again) but nothing like what’s on the news) and could you imagine what would happen if they upgrade the 3G antennae to 4G ones at the same time!

(but then again maybe keeping 3G isn’t that bad after all)

Apparently 3UK put out a statement on X too this AM. Then $ky news picked up the story on their live weather updates.

Thanks for confirming the Whiffy (as the M-I-L calls it🙄) calling still isn’t back to normal. And I am kinda chasing my own tail as it’s impossible to work out if its my normal signal issue or the remnants of this current 4G one. But at the time of copying both statements from 3UK and yours they did both differ in content. So until both show clear I’ll point my finger at the current issue.

Yep, my bad. An earlier post didn’t include the 10:15 update - I have 2 tabs open, one showing the older updates (and writing in the pink banner) and another one I mash F5 on. I picked the wrong one, hence the post above showing 10:15 and 13:00.

As an aside I did subscribe to your service status page during the previous wobble a month or so back and I did not get an email notification to these most recent announcements - a bit of a theme of late regarding email notifications 🤐

Expect calls to continue to improve during the day, 3UK engineers are still monitoring things, so don’t think we’re back to normal yet. Ah, need to remove that Subscribe button, that’s for comments rather than updates to the article. (The Status Page is just a standard article with some injected code to change the layout). Thanks for the spot!

Just to make you aware your reply ​@Jane Clarke didn’t get released from the review part of the forum until after 1pm today. Its nothing sinister just sometimes it false flags genuine posts.

I’m sorry to hear that Jane. My signal initially was great in February 2024 and due to that my wife joined iDM in March. Then things started going downhill from April. Being as our area has suffered with the lack of investment in the masts for years I just let it go (I should have done something about it then looking back). Then since September/October its been nothing but a real pain in the rear. I have the exact same issue - calls dropping - unknown amount of callers not getting hold of me - speaking like a stuck record as I have to continually repeat myself - and if I had just £1 for every time I hear the caller saying you’re breaking up I’d have had enough money to start my own mobile service!

Now I’m not one to defend iDM but this most recent outage was down to 3UK (iDM are a MVNO using 3UK’s infrastrucutre). I’m aware it also affected Smarty. Granted iDM didn’t help matters when they stopped us accessing their App as it gave me the impression this might have been an overseas virtual attack, but that thought was soon put to bed when iDM let us know they were the ones that stopped the access. However with that said we pay iDM for a service so we have to point our fingers at them.

Thanks again for replying Matt, I’m sure you could be doing better things than replying to the ramblings of a mad man.

For the time being I’ve got WiFi calling toggled off (it is normally off but tried this yesterday due to the 4G calling outage), LTE only and manually connected to the iD network and will be keeping one eye on the abandoned bins, a builders bucket (no clue where that came from), various carrier bags and the other eye on my mainly zero to 1 bar of 4G signal strength. Though I may resort to 3G only as this currently gives me a constant 3 bars indoors! (so the reduction in 4G boosts 3G by roughly 50%, work that one out)

Ooooh, okay. I assumed it would have triggered an email upon iD powering up the Window$ 95 PC to then give out the most accurate and up to date service status announcements as possible…..

You know me😜

1 probable final update was made by iDM on their service status page

• Service Status.

Latest Updates:

24/01

16:00 - 3UK have confirmed that services are now fully back to normal, apart from some localised issues related to Storm Éowyn.

I can confirm that calls received at 15:30 and 15:37 were almost okay (I had to be outdoors) and a further 2 calls received at 15:59 and 16:00 appeared to be as good as they are normally here.

Hopefully those affected by Storm Éowyn have any connection issues sorted soon 🤞

So back to my normal ongoing signal issue - yippee 🤔

So post outage things have not returned to their normal* level here.

I’ve not looked at the forums for around 4 days (been trying to work out why its gotten worse) but having had a very quick glance this evening I can see a few other reports from others having continued signal issues themselves. Although theirs could well be 3UK finally switching off 3G in those areas (don’t know as I didn’t read any replies) I can totally appreciate just how frustrating this is.

*For any future readers my area has suffered with signal issues for many years and this happens on EE, O2 and Three (and with that most of the MVNOs - that I’ve been able to check). Also as an aside note (and in case someone suggests this) - If the Three and Vodafone merger was not going to be allowed (it is) then I was planning on leaving iDM in December and jump ship to Vodafone, so until I know how far 3UK might drag Vodafone down (they could well be tied to the same anchor) and due to some help from iDM my departure from iD has been postponed.

With that out of the way, around 3 weeks ago I alluded to the fact I’d spotted an issue with the IP addresses allocated and at that time this issue was intermittent, so didn’t see the point in raising this. I have no clue what happened to cause the outage within 3UK that caused 4G to cough and poop itself (I forced my phone to 3G only during the outage and my calls then worked fine) and I doubt we’ll ever know, but this IP address issue now happens all of the time.

And the issue appears to be that when iDM or 3UK (don’t know who dishes them out) allocate an IP address in the 10.xx.xx.xx range then my signal weaker than an IP address allocated in the 100.xx.xx.xx range. Why would this happen?

As they say a picture paints a thousand words but note the signal strength and note the IP address…..

(10.xxx.xx.xxx range)

(100.xxx.xxx.xxx range)

(10.xx.x.xxx range)

(100.xxx.xxx.xx range)

The phone was in the exact same spot during all 4 IP address changes. And since the outage my phone now has issues using WhatsApp voice calls too when on data whereas prior to the outage they worked.

If anybody has an explanation then feel free.