O2 is suffering a serious service outage that has left tens of thousands of customers in the UK unable to make calls, send and receive texts, or access data services. The problem is also affecting customers of two MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators), Tesco Mobile and GiffGaff, both of which use O2’s network.

The first mention of the problem on O2’s ‘Status’ website was at 4.45pm UK time yesterday. A post read: “Were currently seeing a problem on our network affecting some of our customers. As a result, you may have difficulty making or receiving calls, sending texts or using data. Our engineers are dealing with the problem as a priority and we hope to restore full service as soon as possible.”

The latest update came at 5.50 this morning. That read: “Were continuing to drive the recovery of this issue with our support teams and vendors. Were working to restore service as quickly as possible. Unfortunately were unable to confirm any timescales for service restoration at this time. Well let you know as soon as we can. We apologise once again for any inconvenience this incident is causing.”

Let’s hope for O2’s sake this outage doesn’t drag on as long as the one that affected RIM last year, or cause the company as much damage. To its credit, O2 does at least seem to be doing a better job of keeping customers informed about the state of play.