Vodafone network bludgeoned by break-in

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Hundreds of thousands of Vodafone customers could have been hit by a network outage, caused by criminal damage.

Vodafone has played down the extent of the issues, with a spokesperson telling IT PRO reports of millions of customers being cut off had been “greatly exaggerated.”

A Vodafone technical facility was broken into last night in Basingstoke, Hampshire, when network equipment and IT hardware was stolen.

“This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, SMS and internet services,” an official company statement read.

“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.”

Vodafone said voice services were largely back up and running and it expected everything to return to normal by Monday afternoon.

"All our sites are protected by high level security systems - we're reviewing these with the police in the light of last night's break in," Vodafone said.

Some users took to Facebook to vent their anger at the outage, with a number claiming they had not had signal for 12 hours.

A number called for Vodafone to hand out compensation to those affected.

“There should be a back up system considering the area this covers, even if it’s a basic system for calls and text messages, that way you'd only be apologising for data services which in all honesty isn't as important,” one user posted on Vodafone UK’s official Facebook page.

Criminal damage has been a problem for communications providers in the past.

Last year, BT broadband and phone customers in Kent saw services disrupted after thieves tried to pilfer some copper wire.

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