O2 boss apologises over London network performance

O2 has had some major problems with the reliability of its network

O2 supremo Ronan Dunne has apologised to customers over the poor performance of its London network since summer, blaming an “explosion” in demand for data services from smartphones such as the iPhone, according to an FT report today.

The head of Telefonica O2 UK told the paper that he was disappointed with the performance of his firm’s network, which has been unable to cope with the large numbers of smartphones using data, leading to many users being unable to make or receive calls at times.

However he added that the firm had made progress with network performance in London in December, and was adding an extra 200 mobile base stations in London to help matters.

"Where we haven't met our own high standards then there's no question, we apologise to customers for that fact," Dunne is reported as saying. "But it would be wrong to say O2 has failed its customers en masse."

The comments follow a couple of high profile outage incidents affecting customers, most recently just before Christmas. At the time, O2 announced via its official Twitter feed that the problem, which lasted for more than a day and a half, was caused by “a fault with the allocation of IP addresses”.

Users of the network were left without internet or MMS access after a similar problem surfaced in July.