Residents of Liphook in Hampshire got in touch with Watchdog after the mobile phone signal in the village mysteriously vanished.
Customers with 02, the UK's biggest mobile provider, couldn't get a reliable signal there. In fact, sometimes there was no signal at all.
In the local pub, The Royal Anchor, there was much talk of the missing signal as barmaid Hannah Bowley told us. "Everyone knows everyone in Liphook and no one can contact their friends - it's ridiculous."
Student Hannah pays £30 a month for her 02 contract and found herself leaving the village just to make a call. "You can drive five miles out the village and get a perfect signal, but as soon as you come into the village, nothing," she explained.
No signal for over a month
Village resident, Jane Wright has also had problems. She says in the past her signal has always been very good. So after a month of problems, she was keen to get to the bottom of the issue. She says 02 weren't helpful.
"When you can finally get through to them, half the time it's, "we haven't heard there's a problem" Jane explained.
Jane was told the signal would be fixed. It did come back on for a few days but then went again. She was given another date by 02 but they said they couldn't guarantee it would be fixed.
Watchdog took mobile communications expert John Raw to the village to investigate. John tracked down the 02 mast to a local military training area where it seemed like there was an intermittent problem with the tower. John says these problems are usually fixed within 24 hours.
The day Watchdog went to the mast, an engineer turned up to fix it.
While we were on the site, an engineer turned up to fix the problem. He said the problem had been fixed but when Watchdog went back to the village to spread the good news some residents still had no signal.
Later that day the signal was fully restored.
O2 response
...we are aware of a problem in the last four weeks which led to a loss of coverage in the village of Liphook, Hampshire. Service is now fully restored.
Our network management centre first noticed a problem at the beginning of September, and we have received 19 customer complaints about it.
"We arranged access on 9 September and the site was fully restored to service. Regrettably, it failed again a few hours after the engineer left. We arranged for another visit, which took place on 21 September when the site was again restored to service, at a reduced capacity.
"The site is now fully operational as of Friday afternoon 2 October. We do always try to fix a site in one visit, but with complicated faults and difficult access, sometimes this is just not possible. We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused by this outage. "
"The mast is located at Woolmer Forest, located on Longmore Training Area (MOD), Hampshire and provides O2 network coverage to the village of Liphook.
"We are keen to encourage customers who have been affected by the loss of service in Liphook to call our Customer Services team and we will discuss and review their bill with them.
"We would like to sincerely apologise to all our customers who have been affected by the problems with this mast and would like to assure them that service is now fully restored."
"The mast is on a military base and permission is required before we can gain access (as your own team will have found out on Friday afternoon). The landowner requires 10 days' notice.
"On Friday we had permission to gain access to the site and restored full service by late afternoon."
"We first arranged access on 9 September to restore service. Unfortunately, service failed a few hours later. We were required to reapply for site access, which took place on 21 September, where service was restored at a reduced capacity.
"The site is now fully operational as of Friday afternoon 2 October.
"We do always try to fix a site in one visit, but with complicated faults and difficult access, sometimes this is not possible.
"We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused by this outage."
7) Can you confirm when O2 customers in the GU30 area will have a fully working mobile service?
"Now. Since late afternoon, Friday 2 October. Our engineer remained on site after service was restored, to ensure that there are no unforeseen problems.
"The O2 network is constantly monitored 24 hours a day by our Network Management Centre. We will be fully investigating this matter and ensuring that such problems do not arise again. Once again, we apologise to our customers in the village of Liphook and thank them for bringing this to our attention."
O2 loses it in Liphook
Customers with 02, the UK's biggest mobile provider, couldn't get a reliable signal there. In fact, sometimes there was no signal at all.
In the local pub, The Royal Anchor, there was much talk of the missing signal as barmaid Hannah Bowley told us. "Everyone knows everyone in Liphook and no one can contact their friends - it's ridiculous."
Student Hannah pays £30 a month for her 02 contract and found herself leaving the village just to make a call. "You can drive five miles out the village and get a perfect signal, but as soon as you come into the village, nothing," she explained.
No signal for over a month
Village resident, Jane Wright has also had problems. She says in the past her signal has always been very good. So after a month of problems, she was keen to get to the bottom of the issue. She says 02 weren't helpful.
"When you can finally get through to them, half the time it's, "we haven't heard there's a problem" Jane explained.
Jane was told the signal would be fixed. It did come back on for a few days but then went again. She was given another date by 02 but they said they couldn't guarantee it would be fixed.
Watchdog took mobile communications expert John Raw to the village to investigate. John tracked down the 02 mast to a local military training area where it seemed like there was an intermittent problem with the tower. John says these problems are usually fixed within 24 hours.
The day Watchdog went to the mast, an engineer turned up to fix it.
While we were on the site, an engineer turned up to fix the problem. He said the problem had been fixed but when Watchdog went back to the village to spread the good news some residents still had no signal.
Later that day the signal was fully restored.
O2 response
...we are aware of a problem in the last four weeks which led to a loss of coverage in the village of Liphook, Hampshire. Service is now fully restored.
Our network management centre first noticed a problem at the beginning of September, and we have received 19 customer complaints about it.
"We arranged access on 9 September and the site was fully restored to service. Regrettably, it failed again a few hours after the engineer left. We arranged for another visit, which took place on 21 September when the site was again restored to service, at a reduced capacity.
"The site is now fully operational as of Friday afternoon 2 October. We do always try to fix a site in one visit, but with complicated faults and difficult access, sometimes this is just not possible. We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused by this outage. "
"The mast is located at Woolmer Forest, located on Longmore Training Area (MOD), Hampshire and provides O2 network coverage to the village of Liphook.
"We are keen to encourage customers who have been affected by the loss of service in Liphook to call our Customer Services team and we will discuss and review their bill with them.
"We would like to sincerely apologise to all our customers who have been affected by the problems with this mast and would like to assure them that service is now fully restored."
"The mast is on a military base and permission is required before we can gain access (as your own team will have found out on Friday afternoon). The landowner requires 10 days' notice.
"On Friday we had permission to gain access to the site and restored full service by late afternoon."
"We first arranged access on 9 September to restore service. Unfortunately, service failed a few hours later. We were required to reapply for site access, which took place on 21 September, where service was restored at a reduced capacity.
"The site is now fully operational as of Friday afternoon 2 October.
"We do always try to fix a site in one visit, but with complicated faults and difficult access, sometimes this is not possible.
"We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused by this outage."
7) Can you confirm when O2 customers in the GU30 area will have a fully working mobile service?
"Now. Since late afternoon, Friday 2 October. Our engineer remained on site after service was restored, to ensure that there are no unforeseen problems.
"The O2 network is constantly monitored 24 hours a day by our Network Management Centre. We will be fully investigating this matter and ensuring that such problems do not arise again. Once again, we apologise to our customers in the village of Liphook and thank them for bringing this to our attention."
O2 loses it in Liphook