O2 has claimed it is fully operational again following a network outage that took over 16 hours to fix.
Customers across the South East were unable to make calls, access the internet or send/receive emails from 12:50am yesterday after thieves broke into a site in East London and stole equipment.
A spokesperson claimed users could make calls from 4:30pm and the network was fully restored by 5:30pm.
However, customers hoping to be compensated for the downtime will be disappointed.
"We do not, as a rule, offer compensation but customers can be reassured that full service has been restored"
"Mobile networks are not completely fault-free but incidents like the one we have experienced today are extremely rare," said O2 in a blog post.
"In light of this we do not, as a rule, offer compensation but customers can be reassured that full service has been restored as [of] 5.30pm last night."
Many customers wrote angry replies at the news, especially business customers who claimed their work had suffered as a result of the outage.
A poster called Eleanor wrote: " completely appreciate this is an unforeseen situation but as someone who is currently in the area for work, going to a new office, trying to contact colleagues, being lost en route etc, to find myself with no phone signal (have two phones, both O2) was extremely inconvenient and a little worrying at times."
"I sincerely hope compensation is offered."
O2 has reported the incident to the Police and they are jointly investigating the crime. However, the company said it was "too early to draw any conclusions" and couldn't say how it would prevent such an event happening again.
It is not the only network to have faced such issues this year. In February, one of Vodafone's technical facilities in Basingstoke, Hampshire, was broken into, putting the connectivity of hundreds of thousands of users at risk.
