Outages hit thousands of Eircom users

Thousands of people were left without mobile and landline services for most of yesterday after Eircom experienced major outages.

The issue, which started at roughly 10am, affected telephone services for businesses as well as mobile customers.

Eircom said the problem impacted approximately 5% of its daily call volumes.

By 5pm it was able to confirm it had “made progress to restore service for impacted customers in Dublin and the southern half of the country”.

At 8pm, it said services were “now stable for customers impacted by today’s outage” before adding the “root cause” of the incident was still being investigated.

The outage had resulted in intermittent service that impacted businesses which use 1800 and 1500 numbers, as well as some mobile numbers.

During the day, Childline had taken to Twitter to say it was one of those affected by the outage while Dublin Fire Brigade also experienced problems.

“We are advised by Eircom that using landlines to contact emerg servs may be difficult. Some mobiles also affected. This is a national issue,” they tweeted.

A spokesperson for the fire brigade said the issue was “intermittent” and stressed that 112 and 999 remained unaffected.

Paul Bradley, Eircom’s director of corporate affairs, said he had been in touch with the emergency service and confirmed their service was up and running later the same day.

ESB Networks and Gas Networks Ireland were affected, while RTÉ’s Liveline show, which also uses an 1850 number, had to ask listeners to contact them via an alternative number.

Calls from eMobile or the Meteor network to 1890 260 260, Broadband Tech Support or to 1800 numbers were not being connected either, while the Central Bank’s online reporting helpline said it experienced a “temporary interruption”.

Even those looking to talk to Eircom’s customer care centre were unable to do so.