Three's mobile data goes titsup in mysterious spreading outage Many customers of the UK's smallest mobile network, Three, are without data connectivity this morning as an outage which started last night is spreading with no sign of a fix. The problem is affecting customers across the UK. Once connectivity is lost it can't be regained, but some remain unaffected - so identifying the …
Bizarre behaviour with my Three-connected iPad here - it does appear to be an authentication issue. While trying to connection to anything, I get a flash of a dialog that appears to be asking for credentials, which then vanishes before it can be tapped. Also, "The internet connection appears to be offline" says TuneIn Radio.
* Have restarted device and now no 3G connection symbol either, Edinburgh city centre.
Yeah, Three's 2G connection is actually on a contract between them and Orange (I believe). They used to also provide data services over the 2G link but they've been shutting that down in areas where they believe the 3G connectivity is good enough, and I think they may have shut it down nationwide already.
I remember sometimes I used to be able to get better connectivity by setting my connection to 2G only in Portsmouth, but I haven't needed to do that in forever, and it wouldn't work now anyway.
Calls to other 3 numbers, SMS and access to their own 333 support number also seem affected (although that last one might be due to all their disappointed customers trying to find out what is happening thanks to them neglecting to acknowledge any sort of issue on either their website or twitter...)
my 3G dongle on linux looks like it is successfully authenticating and then immediately dropping on ip config.
Jun 4 10:14:12 x pppd[3749]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jun 4 10:14:12 x NetworkManager[873]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Jun 4 10:14:32 x NetworkManager[873]: <warn> pppd timed out or didn't initialize our dbus module
Jun 4 10:14:32 x NetworkManager[873]: <info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv4 Configure Timeout) scheduled...
Jun 4 10:14:32 x NetworkManager[873]: <info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 4 of 5 (IPv4 Configure Timeout) started...
Jun 4 10:14:32 x NetworkManager[873]: <info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: ip-config -> failed (reason 'ip-config-unavailable') [70 120 5]
Jun 4 10:14:32 x NetworkManager[873]: <info> Marking connection '3 - Internet' invalid.
...
Jun 4 10:14:32 x pppd[3749]: Connection terminated.
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Died in Glasgow City Centre at about 22:00 last night. Thought it might be a local mast thing but was still borked when I got home, and this morning, and now. It was patchy at first, but as the article states, it seems to be spreading to other masts, probably due to them trying to handle the extra load?
Oops, I think I forwarded it to the Register.
> Thanks mike
>> We've switched in all back on now, the pikeys didn't get to stop any of them.
>> Tom's said that Everyone Active's doing a free swim, so all the vagrants can at least be clean.
</TinHat>
I'll admit i got a bit tinfoil n' black choppers after I couldn't locate my girlfriend (who uses Three) using the iphone's "Stalk My Missus" feature (AKA the "I'll Remind You To Post The Letter When You're Off The Tube" feature) at 8.30 this morning. When it persistently failed to find her (my letter didn't get posted), I remembered 'er Maj was heading down to Westminster Abbey for the coronation anniversary, put two and two together and got 9.563, which had me convinced we were actually witnessing a suppression of data/GPS ahead of a planned diamond jubilee coup intended to solve the country's problems by rolling government back to just before Magna Carta with Whalesong Charlie as titular ruler backed by a shadowy group of business types who had subverted the CBI.
Properly attired and safely ensconced behind our large sofa for an hour or so, I began to have doubts when the obligatory choppers failed to turn up, but the clincher was the fact that I could still get Masterchef reruns on iPlayer via my Vodafone dongle, and of course TVs the first thing you go for in a coup (although the speed of my Vodafone connection might not pass as communications in need of suppressing). I hope Three don't make a habit of this, because it's pretty exhausting and not too comfortable behind the sofa.
Can't understand how Vodafone and O2 get away with deliberately degrading their prepay packages unless you buy their Skype add-on package. Useless regulators as always! I thought the problem was coverage. After troubleshooting on forums I realized the real culprit. But by then it was too late as I was stuck with a useless dongle... Anyone else get taken in by this practice?
Am near Northampton, we have had practically no voice, text or data service for over 4 weeks now. Signal pings up, a couple of emails may drop in and then it goes again. Calls won't go through, texts usually take a couple of hours to go. I have no signal now.
Has been intermittent since Jan or Feb.. Many Saturdays, for some reason, we would have no signal and data has been up and down fairly regularly.
Three have given a token credit on our bill. Support rang and I couldn't hear them (another symptom) so they text me to say they tried to call but I couldn't be contacted., please ring them back..
Please fix my signal Three.. And prepare for another round of crediting my bill :)
>Am near Northampton, we have had practically no voice, text or data service for over 4 weeks now.
This morning is the first time I've had the dongle unable to connect to the mast (APN 3internet). In the past (and a little too frequently for comfort these last few weeks) I have noticed the DNS service have been a little unreliable.
Can't talk about voice/text/phone data services (these use different APNs to the dongles) as these services don't normally work in my village although Orange for voice/text does...
Mind you this outage just confirms the validity of having dual broadband suppliers for the home office - particularly as a 56k dial modem connection is probably no longer a realistic fall back - even though there are still some places where it is the only option available...
Was down from late last night here in the South Black Country/North Birmingham area, but it looks like service is back up again. Speeds are TERRIBLE (1/10th of usual) but something is better than nothing.
I assume there is a single point of failure that did this, which, for a "network built for data" isn't really very good at all.
Still nothing official from Three, that is the most annoying part! I buggered about with the settings on my phone thinking it may have been just me. This now means I don't know if I have no data because I've stuffed up the settings or of the Three data network is still down. Without something from Three themselves I'm just sat here rebooting from time to time.
On a side note, if anyone in Leicester has had data return, please let me know! Thanks!
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Marylebone, London: Finally connected late morning. Web browsing speed was good, excellent in fact, but time & date services didn't seem to be working and my Gmail client couldn't connect to google to download email. My phone thinks it's 6th January 1980.
Connection went off again at about 5pm.
It was actually quite nice not having the distraction of the internet on my train to work. Anyway, it's a beautiful day outside and I want beer, not my phone.
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