O2 Sets Out To Restore Customer Confidence

By Katie Stallard, Media & Technology Correspondent

O2 is to spend £10m in an attempt to "rebuild trust" in its network, after admitting recent outages have damaged customer confidence.

Last week’s network fault, which left around 10% of O2’s 23 million customers unable to make calls, send text messages, or access emails, was the second major failure in four months.
A blackout in July left as many as seven million users without service.

Writing in a blog on the company's website today, O2's chief operating officer Derek McManus said: "First, let me say we are extremely disappointed to have let our customers down again. Two network faults in a short space of time is unsatisfactory.

"We took important steps with our supplier after the outage in July to prevent a similar fault happening again, and while this issue was not on the same scale, it did impact our customers. Despite industry-leading technology and major investment in our network, we recognise we need to take immediate action to address this specific problem."

He said the company would be removing a central database, which has suffered two different faults in the last few months, because they could not risk a third incident.

Replacing the database, which is currently provided by one of O2's suppliers, will cost the company £10m.

Mr McManus said they would also be spending £1.5m a day "building out and improving our network".

A new "Service Experience Team" will be set up to manage customer confidence during what he called during what he called "this period of unprecedented investment, culminating in the delivery of our 4G service".

In conclusion, he wrote: "While we recognise that we have dented the confidence and trust of some of our customers, I hope this plan will demonstrate our commitment to rebuilding that trust."
"We will not rest until we have cemented the stability of our network and can deliver the level of service customers have come to expect of us over the last ten years.

"It is no accident that we have established ourselves as the benchmark for customer satisfaction with the fewest complaints of any network as determined by the regulator, Ofcom. We are determined to live up to that in the eyes of our customers."

However, the first five comments posted in response to the blog simply demanded to know when O2's customers would be receiving compensation for the latest outage.