Mobile Network Comparison

Giffgaff is down! We’re getting reports that Giffgaff is suffering a partial network outage. It’s not yet clear whether O₂ and Tesco Mobile are also affected. We’ll update from across various sources as the situation progresses.

2G and 3G calls –  Available
2G and 3G texts –  Available
2G and 3G data –  Available
Emergency calls –  Available

Update 18:02

Okay, it’s been a while now with nothing new to report so we’re going to close down the liveblog. Thanks for following and to all those who contacted us with updates 🙂

Update 17:15

We're going to close down the giffgaff outage liveblog soon as it seems sorted. Comment if you still have issues: http://t.co/fhXTgY4m9v

— Mobile Comparison (@networkcompare) December 3, 2014

Update 17:11

Giffgaff community website seems a bit sluggish at the mo…

Official Update 17:07

@RichardDowling9 And on that note, everything should be back up and running now. http://t.co/lNjEpeUHXC.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 17:06

More and more reports that giffgaff is fixed now coming in.

— Mobile Comparison (@networkcompare) December 3, 2014

Update 17:02

The outage has also been reported elsewhere now.

Update 17:00

It’s 5pm now so this has been going on for about two hours. Thankfully we’re hearing more and more people getting their mobile data back again but it’s still not fixed for everyone. But – without trying to jinx it – the worst might be over now.

Official Update 16:58

Giffgaff have changed the status icons to show that everything is Available again now.

Official Update 16:56

Hi all, thanks for being so patient with us on this while we work through a fix. Quite a few of you are now posting that you can access your data once more, and we’re pleased to confirm that this service is now back up and running. The main website should also allow you to view your balances and goodybag allowances as usual. If not, try a simple refresh – sometimes, the wrong page gets cached in your browser and a refresh updates it.

As part of our troubleshooting steps, we blocked access to giffgaff.com from mobile devices, and we’re going to be lifting that restriction soon. In addition, some of you may find that transactions that you were doing during the issue take a while to process – for example, activations or topups – we’ll be working through these as soon as we can. If you’re planning on topping up or activating a SIM, I’d recommend holding off for a short while until we clear that backlog.

Update 16:52

3G appears to be up in most places but not 4G yet.

Official Update 16:41

We’re still working on bringing things back up. I know quite a few members have reported their data is working once more but we’re not yet in a position to confirm it completely. I’m checking in with the folks.

Official Update 16:34

Hi everyone

Thanks so much for your patience, we understand how frustrating it can be not being able to get signal/data when you need it. Thanks to everyone reporting locations to us, it’s really helpful for us to know which areas have been affected by this so the right departments can look into this issue further.

We’ll be updating this as soon as we make any progress in getting this resolved so stay tuned.

Thanks again for your patience in this and we apologise for the inconvenience caused by this.

Update 16:32

We’re getting reports that data is now back up in some areas. Downtime was approximately two hours.

Update 16:25

We’re hearing that not all phones are down. It might depend upon what goodybag you’re using. So far, it only seems to be affecting data.

Official Update 16:17

Hi all, sorry for the blip in the community site, we had to restart it to make sure everyone could access it without it slowing down.

We’re still investigating the cause of these issues – you may be able to see that out main page is now available in a limited capacity. Once we make further progress I’ll make sure to keep you informed.

Update 16:10

Data still down here and nothing new to report from Giffgaff themselves.

Official Update 15:48

Hi all, a quick update for you on this. We have a couple of early ideas of what could be the cause for this based on the behaviour of giffgaff as a whole and we’re in touch with the people that provide various different services to make sure we can narrow it down. Once we’re certain of the cause of the issue we’ll move ahead with steps to address it and I’ll make sure you’re all aware.

I want to apologise for any issues you’re facing – I promise that we’ll get it sorted as soon as we’re able.

Official Update 15:17

Hi all – we’ve seen some intermittent issues with the main giffgaff website being unavailable and so to make sure we can get it sorted we’ve taken the site to our outage server. This means that you won’t be able to access My giffgaff or the main site until we get it sorted and bring it back up.

We’re also investigating reports of network issues for some members, although others are reporting no issues. Once we know more we’ll make sure that we loop you in on that as well.

Keep an eye on this thread for updates as soon as we make progress.

Update 15:24

Yup: definitely an outage. Officially acknowledged now:

@Mallwill Apologies. We're currently investigating similar reports and will update everyone via http://t.co/zGJTwHcFmL soon.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 15:21

Seems that the website has been down for some time too.

@PandoraRaaain currently the website is experiencing a technical issue this will hopefully be resolved asap.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) December 3, 2014

Update 15:20

Giffgaff seems to be down. Keep checking back here for the latest updates.

Continue Reading

Back in April, Giffgaff suffered a partial network outage for a few hours. We liveblogged the event throughout the evening and later, Mike Fairman, the “gaffer” and CEO of Giffgaff issued a formal apology on the Giffgaff blog.

However, we wanted to dig a little deeper and find out the exact explanation for the series of events that led to the outage. After all, many things must have gone wrong to lead to the particular situation that left untold thousands without any mobile signal for several hours. And since there was another widespread outage at Giffgaff only last Friday, what better time than now to look back at the past mistakes have been made? [edit: There’s been another widespread outage tonight since we published this post. Seriously!]

This is especially true as there had only recently been an O₂ issue in October the previous year after which Derek McManus, the Chief Operating Officer, promised a £10 million investment in infrastructure to prevent the same thing happening again. There had also been a major 24-hour outage in July which prompted Telefónica UK CEO Ronan Dunne to apologise and offer compensation to >O₂ customers as well as a small outage on Giffgaff in March last year.

Given these previous issue and the promises of substantial investments in infrastructure to avoid further outages, we feel it’s only fair for customers to know the root cause and the decisions that led to them being without their phone for such a long time. Previously we investigated the true details of the big O₂ outage so now we’re aiming to do the same for this one.

Giffgaff usually have excellent communication and kept users up to date through the forums while the issue was ongoing. They also posted several blog posts detailing the causes of the outage and what prophylactic measures would be taken in the days and weeks after service was restored.

Charl Tintinger, Head of Operations at Giffgaff, made a blog post explaining in detail what happened. Effectively, his explanation was that a third party supplier “experienced a mains power failure, which resulted in a service wide outage”.

Now this may seem like an explanation, but it’s actually ignoring some very important issues. First of all, anyone who works in telecoms knows that it takes more than a power outage to interrupt critical systems than affect uptime and necessary services. The standard configuration for any data centre is for them to use normal mains power from the National Grid but, in the event of an outage, to automatically transfer to battery powered Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). These keep the systems alive until the power is restored or, if the outage is ongoing, allow for a smooth transfer to backup diesel generators. These generators should automatically kick in and start pumping out electricity before the batteries die.

Data centers rarely just rely on just battery UPS devices for emergency power – in fact, many even have secondary backup N+1 generators to provide additional redundancy. Critical services can take this even further. After all, the people who run mission-critical systems like this have learned over the years that, WTSHTF, outages can last longer than a few hours. It’s better to be prepared for the worst.

However, Giffgaff’s statement said that the reason for this outage was that the “backup power system” was “depleted before the issue was completely resolved”. Now backup generators typically have about a week’s supply of diesel – there’s no way this would have been going on for so long without the administrators being notified or the issue being resolved. So it sounds like there are two possibilities – either the data centre Giffgaff had outsourced to didn’t have backup generators or there was some sort of switchover failure when transferring from the UPS power to the generators.

Both of these possibility distinctly call into question the competence of the third-party Giffgaff were using as well as why they were chosen. It’s a real shame that they were not explicitly named nor was it mentioned whether they’d still be supplying services for the mobile network. After all, it is standard practice to have a Service Level Agreement that guarantees a certain level of uptime. For example, some service providers might promise a high availability of services where the downtime is less than 5.26 minutes per year – this is the equivalent of 99.999% availability (commonly referred to as “five nines”). Service Level Agreements are standard practice in telecommunications – it is not uncommon for network service providers to explicitly state their own service level agreement on their websites.

Giffgaff have said that “The data centre have already updated some of their processes and implemented some physical monitoring on the boxes should the direct power be lost and battery power start to be used”. They have also claimed that “the monitoring on the network nodes is being reviewed so that they alert at the right time, giving engineers enough time to get to site before the back up power is at risk”.

You do expect to get the quality of service you pay for and this sounds suspiciously like the data centre was not meeting modern standards or that someone messed up pretty severely. There certainly shouldn’t be issues with monitoring the power supply to critical systems and we sincerely hope that Giffgaff are reviewing their contract with this third party.

For those of you who want a bit more detail about the particular system that was affected, Giffgaff have said that it was a “piece of hardware that manages calls and texts on the network”. This might not seem like the most helpful explanation but let’s think about how a mobile network is structured.

There are three main parts of the core Network Switching Subsystem – the Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) which effectively sets and releases all connections, the Visitor Location Register (VLR) which stores information about the physical location of each subscriber and the Home Location Register (HLR) which holds information about each subscriber’s SIM card and phone number. Although we don’t have so much information, we can be reasonably sure that this particular outage was due to some part of the Network Switching Substation.

Anyway, we hope that explains a bit more of the details behind this outage. Hopefully now you have a better idea how a mobile operator works and what can be done to avoid these sorts of issues. Thankfully, this outage is now well in the past. Although we are becoming increasingly reliant on our mobiles, a few hours without signal is usually not an emergency and hopefully can be filed away under first world problems.

Continue Reading

We’re getting reports that Giffgaff is suffering a partial network outage. It’s not yet clear whether O₂ and Tesco Mobile are also affected. We’ll update from across various sources as the situation progresses.

2G and 3G calls –  Available
2G and 3G texts –  Available
2G and 3G data –  Available
Emergency calls –  Available

Update 22:53

It’s 100% official now:

Service has now been restored on our network. We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. Here is more info: http://t.co/nplmL4oQyU

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

That’s it for us, then. Thanks for reading. We’ll be back soon with an in-depth blog post on exactly what went wrong and how come it took so long to fix as soon as we get confirmation from Giffgaff. We’re not holding out hope but if there’s any form of compensation or goodwill gesture offered, we’ll be sure to have the full lowdown too.

For now: Goodnight and sleep well, safe in the knowledge that your Giffgaff phone is working again 🙂

Update 22:44

Thanks to everyone who came here to read updates and left comments or tweets with their experience. While you’re here, please check out our articles and especially our comprehensive comparison table of all PAYG mobile networks. We’d also be really grateful if you could rate the networks we’ve reviewed (especially this one), subscribe to our newsletter or consider retweeeting some of our articles or linking to some of our pages.

Official Update 22:37

Just wanted to add to Will T’s update. Thank you all for remaining patient with us while we resolved this. I know it was very frustrating to lose your service and I can assure you a full review is now going on into how this can be avoided. I am sure there will be some future updates around this.

Update 22:36

Woohoo! What a relief! After almost four hours we finally managed to make our first call with our Giffgaff SIM. Over on Twitter it seems that service is back up and running. Thanks for coming by to follow our updates.

Official Update 22:35

Good news – we’re back. Calls, texts and data all appear to be working well.

Thanks so much for following along over the last few hours, everyone. We’ll be keeping an eye on the service for a little while to make sure it’s stable – if you’re not receiving service please make sure that you reset your phone and try again.

Official Update 22:25

Good news – after some sterling work by the engineers, we’re back. Calls, texts and data all appear to be working well.

Thanks so much for following along over the last few hours, everyone. We’ll be keeping an eye on the service for a little while to make sure it’s stable – if you’re not receiving service please make sure that you reset your phone and try again.

Update 22:24

At last one other news source has picked up this story. Over at TechEYE.net they have a quickly-written article about the downtime.

Update 22:23

We’re getting some reports that calls are working any. Can any of you confirm?

Official Update 22:22

Thanks so much to everyone who’s reporting their data service status – please keep it coming. Make sure that you’re restarting your handset before trying again as this will force a new connection to the network and give the most up to date result.

Official Update 22:10

We’ve been working hard to bring service back up and we believe we may have restored data service for those of you that were experiencing difficulty. Would those of you that were having trouble please ensure your settings are correct, restart your handset, and confirm whether this is the case?

Update 22:05

So we’ve hit the 3-hour mark now and there’s still no end in sight. However, there is some reason to be cheerful. At least it seems that mobile data is back up and running for most people. And finally it appears that Giffgaff have identified the issue with their network. They just don’t know how long it will take to fix.

Hopefully we’ll have some more positive updates to bring you over the next hour or so…

Official Update 21:53

Just a quick one – the exact issue with the hardware that failed has been identified and the engineers are working in earnest to correct it. Thanks again and we’ll be updating once we have further updates.

Update 21:52

It appears data is back where we are. Anyone else?

Update 21:49

For those still worried about rumours that the network will be down until 30th April, Giffgaff have officially denied this twice now. However, they have yet to give any other ETA for a fix nor any indication whether it’s more likely to be minutes, hours, days or weeks…

Official Update 21:44

Thanks again for your patience. We’re talking with the tech team and it looks like they’re making good progress on this. We’ll update with more as soon as we’re able.

Update 21:41

Still no mention of the outage from any major blog or news source – seems we’re the only ones coving it. Even though Giffgaff has got 100,000s of users now, it’s not yet deemed important enough to write about.

Anyone want to take bets for how long this will last in total?

Update 21:37

If you’re bored with waiting to get your network service back, here’s some things to while away the time:

• How we think all companies should deal with network outages on Twitter.
• The full low-down on what exactly caused the big O₂ outage last year. We we the only tech blog to actually look at this seriously and give you answers about what went wrong.
• Our amusing Timeout Tuesday series of funny YouTube videos.

Got anything funny or interesting you want to share with people while we wait for a more substantial update from Giffgaff?

Update 21:34

Well that was useless…

So it seems we don’t really know anything other than nobody can say how long this outage will last and that it’s something to do with the voice call hardware that is, for some reason, affecting texts and data too.

On the plus side we have got Twitter updates working again even if Giffgaff aren’t providing much info on their Twitter account:

@emma_loopy Hey Emma, we know this is annoying, no ETA as of yet and we'll update here as soon as we know anything.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

Official Update 21:30

We have no further updates at this time. Unfortunately we don’t have an ETA for a fix yet. As soon as we do we will let you all know.

Official Update 21:29

All we know at the moment is, it was a problem with piece of hardware that manages voice calls. Any other information we find out will be updated on the thread.

Official Update 21:27

Thanks again so much for the patience you’re showing with us on this. We know how important it is to be connected and we’re working as hard as we can to make sure we can bring the system back online as soon as possible.

Update 21:18

We haven’t been able to get data to actually work at all. And nobody on Twitter seems to either. Is data working for anyone at all? Is it really “intermittent”?

Official Update 21:15

Thanks for your comments about your varying degress [sic] of data service – I’ve added this as intermittent at the top of the thread as it’s a more accurate representation of the service currently.

I also want to assure you that we’re still working hard to make sure that this is resolved as soon as we can.

Update 21:13

We’re getting unconfirmed reports that Tesco Mobile is unaffected (although O₂ is definitely fine. Anyone with a Tesco Mobile SIM able to verify this for us?

Update 21:11

It’s just past 9pm and the issue has been going on for over two hours now. The community thread just hit 100 pages! Still no sign as to when it will be fixed though 🙁

Lots of people saying that data definitely is not working in opposition to Giffgaff staffer t_will. Only a few are saying it is still working.

Official Update 21:01

zobia22 just responded to a post where someone claimed that the outage will continue until 30th April:

We have no idea how long calls and texts will be down for. As soon as we do have a time frame or any more information, we will update this thread.

Update 20:57

So Giffgaff are saying that data should still be working. No luck here though. What about you guys?

And anyone else managed to receive any texts in the last couple of hours?

Official Update 20:54

I’ve just heard from the tech team and they’re looking at a couple of different options right now. The issue appears to be with a piece of hardware that manages voice calls, which we’ll be fixing shortly.

After investigation, the reports that data is affected appear to be incorrect, so I’ve marked this as available. If you’re having problems with your data allowance please make sure that your settings are correct and that you have an active allowance.

Official Update 20:50

We are updating the thread as soon as we get any information. Once we have more details on what is causing the issue, we will update the thread.

Update 20:50

Could the end be nigh?! We just got a text into our text Giffgaff phone. It was sent at 20:48 and arrived by 20:49. If texts can be received maybe they can be sent too? We’re trying our best to test this hypothesis out… Let us know if you have any luck too…

Update 20:47

Some black humour in this difficult time 🙂

what did one giff gaff user say to the other? nothing

— Eajaz Suarez MUA (@Eajazzz) April 23, 2013

Official Update 20:42

Seems they are trying to deflect the blame. But no hard information about what exactly is causing the fault.

I just want to jump in to reassure you all we are doing everything within our powers to get this resolved as soon as possible. We are working with our third parties and we will update as and when we know more.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you.

Update 20:39

An update on the data issue. We’ve been in contact with several other Giffgaff users as well as running our own tests – it seems that the phone will still say it’s connected to data but won’t be able to load any pages or send/receive any data. So data seems to be down everywhere now according to what we’re hearing. Is it working for any of you?

Official Update 20:35

I’ve noticed a few people concerned about this, so wanted to make clear that emergency calls to 999 should still work while we’re experiencing this difficulty, so if you are experiencing an emergency that would require it you should still be able to get assistance.

Update 20:32

Giffgaff users are getting ncreasingly irate. This is from hogweed on the forums:

Well time for the giffgaff boss to resign. All his plans to make sure this didn’t happen again have ben [sic] shown to be incompetent lies.

It is fair to mention that Giffgaff have had more than their fair share of outages. Usually it’s been O₂‘s fault but at the moment it seems this problem rests squarely on their shoulders.

The forum thread is now up to 42 pages and is being updated faster than we can read it….

Official Update 20:31

Just wanted to thank you for all your comments so far. We know how much people rely on their mobile phones and we’re working as quickly and as well as possible to ensure that service is restored as soon as we’re able.

Update 20:29

The good news is that the Giffgaff community forum seems to be standing up to the strain at the moment. The bad news is that there’s still no word on the cause or duration of this outage. Even worse, we haven’t had our dinner yet 🙁

Official Update 20:20

It appears that this issue may also affect data service intermittently. I’ll update the title to reflect this, so if you see anyone posting about losing their data service please direct them to this thread.

We’re still working on the issue and will update you once we have plans for a resolution.

So there you have it, data is officially affected too.

Update 20:19

The Giffgaff community thread (when you can get it to load) is now up to 20 pages…

User therosey1973 (I mean “member”) just reported that she couldn’t get a taxi so had to walk 3 miles home…

Please help spread the word by linking to this page if you have a website or by tweeting a link so that people can keep up-to-date with the outage.

Update 20:17

We’re getting reports that data is now down too. Our own tests are not yet conclusive but we strangely got redirected to the URL http://tablet.o2.co.uk/ when trying to visit Google. We suspect data will be fully down soon too but still have no idea what is causing the outage. Giffgaff haven’t given any clues at all. What experience are you getting?

Update 20:16

No updates of any substance from Giffgaff recently. We still can’t access the community post and their Twitter account is just trying to reassure indiviudals rather than discuss the problem and its solution.

Update 20:13

Sorry if your comment isn’t approved immediately – they are coming in quicker than we can publish them at the moment! Don’t stop though…

Update 20:11

Can anyone positively confirm that O₂ and Tesco Mobile are unaffected by this issue?

Update 20:10

Seems tweets aren’t embedding properly. We’re working on fixing it but for the time being just visit the URLs.

Update 20:07

Giffgaff have officially confirmed that the outage is nationwide.

@Ashley_Armitage It's not you. It's us. Everyone is experiencing it right now, we'll update you when we have more information. Thanks.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

They have also said that they are unable/unwilling to give an estimate for how long the downtime will last.

@Kimmuirxo Hey Kim, we don't have an ETA right now, but will update on here when we do.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

Update 20:05

Our tests and comments from users seem to show that data is still working. But what about the speeds? Are you seeing any difference compared to what you usually get?

Update 19:59

Giffgaff just confirmed that calls and texts are down. Are we to infer from this that data is still fine. Does yours work? Let us know…

@HollyReijs Evening, calls and texts are currently down, but we'll update you as soon as information becomes available.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

Update 19:53

Update from Giffgaff:

@StefanGauntlett Hey, there's no new updates right now, but we'll inform you when there is here as well.

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

We’re really hoping they will be able to give an estimate for the restoration of service soon.

Update 19:49

We just ran some tests and it’s still definitely not working. Even triggering Airplane mode and back again or doing a hard reboot of the phone does resolve the issue.

Update 19:46

The Giffgaff community is struggling under the strain of all the customers without service. It keeps going down making it harder for people to get information. Our server is taking a beating too but we’ll do our best to keep it going for you guys…

Update 19:43

Just rejigged this post so that the latest updates are at the top and so you don’t need to keep scrolling down to check if anything new has been posted 🙂

Update 19:40

Offical word from Giffgaff:

We are having a few issues with the network we use at the moment. Please bear with us for updates check the Community http://t.co/Obqpv9yvhO

— giffgaff (@giffgaff) April 23, 2013

Update 19:37

Nothing new to report from Giffgaff yet unfortunately. But from what people have been tweeting us and commenting here, this definitely seems to be nationwide. Reports coming in of the network being down from all over the UK. Keep them coming so we can see if there are any improvements anywhere over the course of this issues…

Update 19:30

Just a friendly reminder – please help us keep track of the outage by commenting below with your location and which services are currently unavailable. Cheers 🙂

Update 19:29

There are currently a torrent of tweets about the outage. Please refer people to this post for the latest updates and use the hashtag #giffgaffoutage to keep track of the problem.

Anyone else on giffgaff's network down?

— chloeeeee!✌ (@chlomaryjane) April 23, 2013

@nero5193 I think it must be a nationwide thing. Hope it gets fixed sharpish, it's super annoying

— Penny (@pr_89) April 23, 2013

someone inform me when #giffgaff is working again please

— THAT GIRL (@beth_ebdon) April 23, 2013

Texts not sending for some reason. Wonder if @giffgaff are having any technical problems. D:

— Mark Teo (@Mahzes) April 23, 2013

@giffgaff I have problems with my phone, I have enough credit&I have unlimited text, but I can't send calls or texts&can receive them..HELP!

— Party Animal (@JaimeGoddard) April 23, 2013

Giff gaff is down can't send texts or any calls this happening to anyone else?

— Duncan Corbett (@DuncanC95) April 23, 2013

Update 19:25

If you are on Giffgaff and your network is currently down, please comment below with your location and the services that aren’t working. We’re currently trying to get a picture of whether this outage is nationwide or localised. We have already had emails from people in Sussex, West Mids, Glasgow and London about their phones not working.

Update 19:22

Some forum threads from users about this issue: 1, 2, 3, 4.

But still nothing on the official Service Updates board.

Update 19:19

Twitter is currently awash with reports that people can neither text nor call. There’s still no official word from Giffgaff acknowledging the outage.

Continue Reading