Blog

[#1]

As you very likely to be already aware, today we've suffered a major service outage - it was caused by major water damage to the computer network in a our data centre and it took nearly 8 hours fix.

Firstly I'd like to offer my apologies for the interruption in service and thank all of our members for their patience whilst we fixed the issue.

The service is largely back up and running now - the exception is new activations which are currently being queued and our service teams are working on a fix.

Some of you have asked about compensation - we're going to focus on fixing the issues we've had and make sure we have a stable service first - and then we'll sit down think of ways to make it up to you.

We'll continue to post updates on the support community so click here for the latest news.

Thanks once again for your patience.

Mike Fairman

CEO giffgaff

Update 21:15

Thanks for everyone's comments - especially those appreciating our way of keeping you up to date!

In response to a few of the issues raised...

Porting - those that were scheduled for today may have been delayed - we're continuing to work on these as fast as we can. 

Texts - we think that for most of the outage, inbound text messages should have been delivered. Whether those that failed initially will ultimately be delivered will be determined largely by the re-try policies of the network from which they were sent. In other words, you may or may not get them depending on which network sent them.

Root cause - we will of course investigate this and report on the conclusions. Our data centre does have an uninterruptable power supply and backup generators but its possible that even if these worked the water damage to the network gear was sufficient to bring the service down.

[#2]

Cheers for the update Mike.  Can't have been easy for any of the staff today

[#3]

Myself and others would like to hear what is being done to make sure an issue like this can't happen again in the future. Why is giffgaff relying on one server to power the entire network? Where are the backup systems?!

[#4]

hopefully they'll be working on making a backup system

[#5]

Many thanks for keeping everyone updated.I'm fed up of this compensation culture and people wanting to claim.When you have a burst water main there's nothing we can do but grin and bear it.It's doesn't help when people keep moaning and clogging the system up!

[#6]

When will Number PORTS start working? my brother put one through on Tuesday for Today, and he has been waiting all day.

[#7]

Seems a bit daft to be in a position where one problem can out an entire network Not having my phone for a day was a ball ache!

[#8]

I'm alright for compensation Mike, I actually enjoyed being left alone today so thank you.

[#9]

There you have it; apologies from the CEO himself. Can't ask for much more than that. Thanks Mike for the thread. Very calm and collective of you. 

[#10]

@gypsymu - Would you say the same if your power went off for the day? Systems around the country which people depend on go offline all the time but services remain operational because companies have the sense to have backup systems in place. Why don't giffgaff have these?

[#11]

Thanks for the update, but I am utterly disappointed! To be without sevice for nearly the whole day is appalling. I've been on other networks before and this problem has occured, but has always been fixed within a few hours at most. I was expecting very important phone calls today and being without service has left me in a very bad position. What assurance do i have that this is not going to be a regular occurence?!

I'm honestly thinking about switching back to another network! #Dissappointed!