Tens of thousands of Vodafone customers in the UK were unable to access broadband, mobile internet, and voice calls on Monday afternoon, with reports of disruption surging on the outage monitoring website Downdetector.
The problems began around 3pm, and by 3.20pm more than 135,000 incidents had been reported. Over two-thirds related to home broadband services, while nearly a quarter involved mobile internet access. About 8% of customers reported being unable to make calls due to a lack of mobile signal. Some users also found they could not access the Vodafone app or website.
The outage affected cities including London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Manchester. Vodafone confirmed the issue was limited to its UK network and was not the result of a cyber-attack. A spokesperson for VodafoneThree said: 'This afternoon the Vodafone network had an issue affecting broadband, 4G and 5G services. 2G voice calls and SMS messaging were unaffected and the network is now recovering. We apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers.'
By 6pm, Downdetector still showed around 4,000 reports. Vodafone has over 18 million UK customers, including more than 700,000 broadband users. The company recently merged with Three UK, creating the country's largest mobile provider, but Three customers were not affected by this outage.
Other networks, including BT, EE, and VirginMediaO2, reported no issues. Sabrina Hoque, a telecoms expert at Uswitch.com, reminded customers that under Ofcom regulations, they may be entitled to compensation if outages persist. For broadband, compensation of £9.76 per day applies after two days without service. Mobile signal compensation depends on circumstances, but refunds or account credits may be available.
