Stop the Drop!

[Ben]

To all O2 UK customers:

Have you:
- Ever noticed calls go straight to voicemail?
- Ever sent a text and noticed that old ones came in at the same time?
- Ever knowingly not received a text straight away, even though you can see you've got signal?
- Ever been given the 'silent treatment' when trying to establish an outbound call?

O2 UK have long suffered with a fault whereby subscribers 'drop off' the network, despite the handsets concerned being switched on and in coverage. During this period of time, the phone is essentially offline until something happens to make it re-register. This could be someone trying to call you and getting voicemail first time around, you trying to make a call, or you sending a text.

Here's a little example of what the rest of the world sees when an O2 subscriber is stuck in this 'state':

MSISDN: 447590xxxxxx
Status: Unavailable
Network Code: No Network Code
ErrorCode: 1b
ErrorDescription: MAP_ERR_ABSENT_SUBSCRIBER
Prefix: 447590
Organisation: Telefonica O2 UK Limited
Network: O2
Country: UK

This is the response from O2 UK's Home Location Register, which basically keeps track of all of the subscribers. It's saying that in this case the subscriber, which happened to be me, is offline.

Here's how it should look:

MSISDN: 447590xxxxxx
Status: Success
Network Code: 23410
MSC & Location: 447802xxxxxx GBR
Organisation: Telefonica O2 UK Limited
Network: O2
Country: UK
Ported: No
Prefix: 447590
Organisation: Telefonica O2 UK Limited
Network: O2
Country: UK

Without access to a HLR Lookup facility it can be difficult to know that your phone is in this state - given that any action on your part will probably cause re-registration and if you've got texts waiting to come to you, well, you wont know until it's too late.

However, for now, please post your own experiences of this issue. I have contact details for the network engineers department at O2 and if we can put together enough information I'll pass the details on.

[Hands0n]

At the risk of hijacking this thread but it does relate ....

Hey Ben - is this what you see - does the same thing happen on Orange when we get the "Calls straight to voicemail" issue that has plagued Orange since ... oooooh let me see .... forever!?

I left Orange for mostly that reason around 8 years ago and have not returned as I keep reading that it is happening.

I was shocked to witness it happening on O2, to a much lesser degree I must say, but nonetheless it is there, everpresent.

[Ben]

Interestingly no, it doesn't appear to be the same situation as on Orange.

On Orange you'll have a call go straight to voicemail but then immediately get the missed call text. SMS message delivery to Orange handsets does not, in my experience, appear to be affected.

O2, on the other hand, is more likely to connect a call, even if the handset is showing 'Absent Subscriber' at the time the call is placed. Text messages, on the other hand, can be delayed for hours and hours.

Pick your poison! Or use a network that, y'know, works :(

[The Mullet of G]

I've never been an O2 customer, but quite a few of my mates are and they have long had those same issues. It kinda defeats the purpose of having a mobile phone if you constantly have to prompt the thing before it'll alert you to calls and texts.

Another thing is those older O2 sims that wont let you reply to texts sent from them, you have to start a new message before it'll send, I think it might have been an offshoot of that time O2 released a load of new numbers but didn't bother telling anyone else they had done so....at least I think it was something along those lines, either way its annoying.

[Ben]

I don't want to jinx it, but...

...since being back on O2 I'm yet to observe this issue. It was fairly prevalent before. I've also not had a complaint in about O2 numbers not receiving SMS messages due to this fault for quite some time now, so I'm hopeful that the problem has been fixed.