O2 will not offer instant compensation to customers hit by signal problems

The network said it would look at compensation claims on a case-by-case basis

Customers affected by the O2 signal outage will not be immediately compensated - they will need to make a claim (AFP)

O2 will not be offering customers compensation for the signal failure on Monday that left people in Manchester, London, Glasgow and parts of Northern Ireland unable to call or text anyone.

The outage sparked outrage among customers and even prompted a tweet from the business secretary Sajid Javid, who told the provider to “sort it out”.

A spokesperson for O2 told The Independent that the company would not be making a blanket compensation offer to the affected customers in the same way it did in 2012, when a significant signal outage saw the company give a £10 voucher to every customer.

But the outage on Monday, which left the people affected with no signal for around seven hours, which was “not on the same scale” as the issue three years ago.

Instead, those affected will need to make their own claim to the company to request compensation. These claims will be dealt with on a “case-by-case” basis, the spokesperson said.

In a statement, the company said: “Yesterday evening some customers experienced a problem accessing our network and we apologise for the inconvenience caused to those customers who were affected. We restored service at 23.35.

“The problem was caused by some network equipment that was temporarily unable to correctly process mobile phone traffic for some of our customers.

“To be more specific, it was primarily the system that allows overseas customers to roam onto our network. The problem also impacted a second piece of equipment that allows calls, texts and data for UK customers to be managed correctly on our network.

“Having identified this, we have now isolated the problem to prevent this from happening again.”