Considering the current state of the nation, in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, you’re likely housebound (for the most part). With this in mind, keeping lines of communication open is more important than ever, and those means of communication are under greater load than ever.
The effects of this increased load have already led to brief outages across the country’s major networks, meaning many have been unable to send or receive calls, messages or use data-based services like social media apps and the like. With the chance of a UK lockdown lurking, it’s looking like such conditions are only going to worsen before they get better.
Should you have concerns about the reliability of your connection to Three’s UK network or you’ve already experienced issues that have indirectly been brought about by the effects of this novel coronavirus, this article should help localise and diagnose the problem and suggest some possible solutions.
You might also find our how to boost your mobile signal feature useful.
How to check whether Three is down
- Check-in with Three’s (standalone) Network Checker, unlike its standard coverage checker, this one relays the state of the network in real-time (it refreshes every 30 minutes)
- Scour Twitter’s ‘Latest’ search tab and other social media platforms to see if other people are also reporting outages
- Check out a third-party service like DownDetector to verify any network issues
- Dial *#*#4636#*#* on an Android device and under ‘Phone Information’ see whether voice and data services are active
What to do when the problem is local to you
- Begin by restarting your phone
- Ensure your SIM card is correctly inserted
- Try moving to different locations to see whether connectivity improves
- Check your phone’s quick settings or settings menu to ensure mobile data is switched on
- Turn off flight/aeroplane mode, if it’s switched on
- Make sure your phone’s firmware is up to date
- Make sure roaming is enabled, if you’re abroad
- Check that your latest bill is paid and that payment has gone through
If your phone still isn’t working and you’re sure that it’s not a widespread issue, back up the contents of your device and then perform a factory reset.