Vodafone is DOWN: Service is crashing for thousands of Britons in the UK

Vodafone says it is “aware of and investigating a problem” that has left thousands without internet for more than four hours.

According to Down Detector, the problems started around 08:29 BST and are affecting users across the country.

While the reason for the outage remains unclear, 87 percent of those who experienced problems said the problem was with fixed internet, while nine percent struggled with mobile internet.

Hotspots are in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff, but social media users in other locations have complained of problems.

They say they can connect to their routers but they don’t allow internet connection.

Vodafone UK tweeted: ‘We are aware of and are investigating an issue affecting some of our home broadband customers as of this morning.

“Reconnecting our customers is now our top priority, and we are incredibly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.”

One Twitter user said: ‘Is #vodafone home broadband down for you too? Getting green light in #w12 #London but no connection…’

Another added: ‘Vodafone is always the worst anyway. internet is broken.. again.’

Vodafone UK has responded to complaints by advising customers to use their ‘self-service area’ to ‘diagnose and fix problems’ themselves.

However, many say this is not helpful as there appears to be a nationwide problem.

The tech giant initially responded to customers this morning, saying it is “not aware of any outage at this time.”

However, it has now acknowledged the issue after numerous complaints, saying it is “currently under investigation by our technical teams.”

One user said, “Read the room.

“Problems across the country and multiple reports that your online tools aren’t working. At least keep firing off the same response.’

“This has been raised with our support teams who are working hard to restore the service as quickly as possible,” the Vodafone UK Twitter account responded.

Last week, rival provider Virgin Media had a similar five-hour outage that left thousands of Britons unable to access the internet.

Down Detector receives network status updates from a variety of sources, including social media and reports submitted on its website.

The network problems come just after the news that Vodafone will finalize a merger with competitor Three within a few weeks.

Talks between FTSE 100 giant Vodafone and Three’s owner CK Hutchison – led by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing – have been going on for more than six months.

The networks hope that a combination of their UK operations can help them compete with their rivals in the 5G rollout.

“Combining our businesses will give Vodafone UK and Three UK the necessary scale to accelerate the rollout of full 5G in the UK and extend broadband connectivity to rural communities and small businesses,” Vodafone said in an update to shareholders.

Vodafone would own 51 percent of the new company and Mr Hutchison would take over the rest.

In 2021, the £31 billion merger between Virgin Media and O2 was given the go-ahead by Britain’s competition watchdog.

The outage also comes a few months after Vodafone launched new cost-of-living packages for households and small businesses.

A social broadband tariff gives households connectivity for £12 a month, and the tech giant is giving small businesses free broadband for a year.

Vodafone has been approached for comment.