O2 Customers Lose Their Mobile Phone Signal

O2 customers across the country were hit by a signal outage on Monday night, with Business Secretary Sajid Javid urging the phone provider to "sort it out".

There were reports of disruption in most major cities – with phone masts in London, Leeds and Nottingham not working for several hours.

Reports of an outage were also investigated as far apart as Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Newcastle – with Glasgow and Belfast the only cities seemingly immune of disruption.

On Twitter, some annoyed customers said they had no service for as long as five hours – with one disgruntled man claiming he had to walk seven miles because he was unable to phone for a taxi.

Although O2 insisted its service had returned to normal at 11.35pm on Monday night, the network's online status checker said otherwise, with phone mast faults in London and Newcastle still reported at 1.30pm on Tuesday afternoon.

Further information adds: "This means you might experience problems making calls, using the Internet, or sending/receiving emails."

However, a spokesman claimed this report was wrong – and that customers in these areas should have no issues using their mobiles as they normally would.

He added: "We apologise for any inconvenience caused to those customers affected and we will now begin a full investigation to identify the root cause."

The company has suggested its customers should reboot their handsets by turning their phones off and on again.