Orange mobile data chucks punters

Disconnections plague network

Orange UK users are reporting that the mobile data service is dropping connections and refusing to let some customers onto the internet at all.

The problems started yesterday afternoon, with users unable to connect over 2G or 3G networks. Last night it looked as though the operator had managed to slap a fix together, but this morning it's all down again with some users reporting that only 2G connections are working while others can't get any connectivity at all.

We've asked Orange for a statement on the matter, and will let you know when we hear from them, but it's impossible to ignore the potential that this is related to the ongoing integration of Orange and T-Mobile networks into Everything Everywhere.

That integration starts with roaming between networks, so Orange users will be able to connect to the T-Mobile network where they have insufficient coverage, and vice versa. That's due to happen later this year so it makes sense that engineers would be mucking about with the network at a fairly low level.

That may not be relevant - the roaming will cover voice and data networks, while this outage is only affecting data users so it could be something else entirely. The problem does appear to be regional - some users are connecting just fine. We'll let you know when we hear more from the operator. ®