UK: Raid Disrupts Vodafone Services

Millions of Vodafone customers in southern England lost service Monday when burglars smashed their way into a building and stole vital network equipment.

The raiders entered the building in Basingstoke, Hampshire, early this morning and took or damaged the network and IT hardware causing services to crash, Vodafone said.

There was a loss of voice, text and internet access across the south for millions of customers of the mobile phone giant. A Vodafone spokesman said voice services were now up and running with text and data also due to be working soon.

“We had a break-in last night at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment,” the spokesman explained. “This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, SMS and internet services.”

“We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can. There has been no impact on the privacy of customers’ data,” he added.

Hampshire police are believed to be investigating the theft but the force has not released any information to the media so far.