Over 100,000 affected by Three Ireland mobile disruption

The Three Ireland mobile network has resolved a connectivity issue which caused disruption to over 100,000 customers around the country.

Some 5 per cent of Irish customers were unable to send SMS, make voice calls or use their data on Saturday afternoon due to problems with the phone network.

A spokesman for Three Ireland said it was an “isolated issue” and not a full outage. He confirmed shortly before 5pm that the network issue had been resolved.

A statement from the network said the problem had been traced to a “faulty data card at one of our data centres which has now been replaced” and apologised to customers for the inconvenience.

The Three Ireland customer care team tweeted on Saturday afternoon: “We’re aware that some customers may be experiencing service issues. We’re investigating this and we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

It later tweeted: “We can confirm that service is now fully restored. Customers may need to restart their phones to resume service.”

The disruption caused outrage on Twitter with many users tweeting about their frustrations with the service.

Three Ireland has a total of about 2 million customers.

The mobile network experienced an interruption in services last April when 300,000 customers, or about 15 per cent of Three Ireland’s two million customers, were affected by the disruption.