Three UK suffers 3G and 4G data outage

Data services are down as customers flock to Twitter to complain

Three UK, the mobile operator, is in the midst of a data outage which has affected people across the UK.

The company, which is owned by Hutchison Whampoa, hasn't yet given any update on why services are down for many of its eight million plus customers. However, its Twitter page @ThreeUKSupport has replied to customers who have seen their 3G or 4G signal go down by saying "we're aware some customers are experiencing problems with some services. We're working to fix as soon as possible".

Many of those who have tweeted to @ThreeUKSupport are based in London, but a look at website www.downtoday.co.uk which enables people to leave status updates on mobile services, showed that people were having issues all across the country - including Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol.

This isn't the first time that Three UK's data services have gone down. Back in 2013, in the space of a day, the firm's 3G network went down, then went back up, before going down again shortly afterwards.

Three UK's owner Hutchison Whampoa has finalised a deal to buy rival O2 and merge it with its existing mobile network. Buying O2 - which was formerly owned by BT, and is now owned by Telefonica - would have catapulted the firm from the UK's fourth biggest mobile operator to the biggest, while reducing the number of infrastructure-owning players from four to three - with BT and Vodafone being the other two.

It is currently under investigation by the European Union's competition authorities, and it has indicated that it is prepared to sell off network capacity and frequencies in a bid to mollify the European Commission's competition concerns.