Vodafone mobile network fails after break-in at exchange

Vodafone is slowly restoring services following a major network blackout due to an overnight break-in at an exchange in Basingstoke.

The disruption to Vodafone's network resulted in hundreds of thousands of customers losing all services, including voice calls, text messaging and internet services.

Shortly after 12.45pm, Vodafone confirmed to Computeractive that 2G and 3G services had been restored and that the company was "working now on SMS and voicemail".

A Vodafone spokesperson also confirmed that the area affected was "broadly the M4 corridor with some areas either side".

Police are currently investigating the break-in, which resulted in damage to equipment at the exchange centre with "specialist network and IT hardware" also stolen.

Vodafone said the network was being restored "bit by bit" and that the situation was "improving all the time".

At the time of writing, Vodafone was not able to provide exact details on when the network would be resorted to full service but said it expected "to be back to normal this afternoon".

The company also stated that the privacy of customer data had not been compromised.