On Thursday 17th October, Three’s UK network grind to a halt for many of its customers. Not only could they not access data services, but many were left without the ability to make phone calls or receive texts. The issue? Well, Three says that the problem initiated in its data centre. 

In an email sent to customers following the shutdown, Three apologised for the disruption caused and blamed essential work at one of its data centres. It did not elaborate on the exact cause of the issue at the data centre, although it did take the firm nine hours to return to normal – so it was no small hiccup. 

Three UK has been busy diversifying its data centre line-up in the run-up to 5G. It has ditched the usual approach of having three data centres based around the London and Midlands areas, and instead opted to run its network from 21 data centres spread from as far North as Edinburgh to Portsmouth in the South.

With all those data centres connected with a solid fibre connection, Three UK says that it will be able to offer the low latency required for 5G applications. It also says that it will offer greater capacity, as its data centres are managed by an external provider and therefore can be scaled as the network grows. 

It’s not clear whether Three’s new data centre strategy is partially responsible for the outage, but if we hear more, we’ll be sure to let you know.