Vodafone Suffers Network Outage
Thousands of customers lost voice and SMS service after a break-in at a Vodafone network hub in Basingstoke, England. Police said the stolen equipment could end up on the black market. REUTERS

Several hundred thousand customers of Vodafone UK lost their wireless service when equipment was damaged during a break-in at a network facility in Basingstoke, England.

Voice and text services were down for several hours on Monday, after someone broke into the Vodafone network office in Basingstoke, a small city some 50 miles southwest of London. Some network equipment and IT hardware was stolen, but Vodafone did not say specifically what was missing. Basingstoke is a major network hub for the company.

On Vodafone's technical forums, the company says that voice services are largely restored and service losses were concentrated along the M4 motorway which runs west of London towards Wales. The administrator posting also says nothing like this has happened to Vodafone before. Vodafone is also reviewing its security measures to see how someone got in.

According to a statement from Vodafone, the break-in happened in the early hours of Monday morning. Full service should be restored by the end of the day and no private customer data was compromised. The police are investigating, the company says.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story call (646) 461 6917 or email j.emspak@ibtimes.com.

United kingdom