Crossed lines leaves Orange punters seeing red

London calling

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 6th August 2004 09:35 GMT

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Mobile phone punters in London have been having the wierdest conversations after Orange admitted that it has been getting its wires crossed.

An "intermittent crossed line fault on the Orange UK network" is being blamed for some callers being able to listen in to other people's calls - and presumably, other people earwigging into their conversations.

According to one reader: "Since [last] Sunday, I have been having problems with the Orange network. My calls get randomly cross-connected with third parties (as once used to happen with landlines). The problem has been getting worse over the past couple days, and now a large portion of my calls are incorrectly routed. The person I am dialing is able to hear me, but I am only able to hear a random third party."

An Orange spokesman told us: "We can confirm that there has been an intermittent crossed line fault on the Orange UK network. This is affecting a very small number of our customers in the London area.

"We are working with our suppliers to establish the cause of this fault and restore a full service to all customers as soon as possible. Orange is committed to offering the best customer service and we very much regret any inconvenience caused." ®