Three UK suffers first major nationwide outage since 2015

Three claims its network is now back up - but that subscribers may need to turn devices off and on again to restore services

Mobile operator Three suffered a nationwide outage overnight with services only coming back online from mid-morning today.

Users reported difficulties access data services and even making voice calls from around 11.30pm on Wednesday night. Furthermore, the Three website also spent most of the night "under maintenance", compounding the problem, although that may have been due to the weight of numbers visiting to check the ‘network status' page.

As of 1.30pm, the Three website would appear to be operating over HTTP rather than HTTPS, indicating ongoing problems. The company, meanwhile, stated: "Our services are coming back online. If you're still having problems, please turn your device off and on again to get re-connected."

Voice and data services returned from around 10am this morning, although data speeds have remained sluggish.

Down Detector logged more than 4,000 reports of problems on the network between midnight and 1am on Thursday. And, six hours later, that number had increased to 5,000 between 6am and 7am.

Three, though, failed to communicate with customers until around 9am this morning. "We are currently looking into an issue with our network. We would like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience," the company stated when its offices opened this morning.

Naturally, social media has been awash with angry subscribers unable to Uber their way home after a night out, among other things.

Three has claimed within the hour that the problem - which it still hasn't provided details about - has been cleared. Users, though, may need to turn their devices off and on in order to restore connectivity.