Cable stealing thieves were responsible for a network outage that left some Vodafone UK customers without service for most of yesterday.

A spokeswoman was unable to explain what the cables were for, but confirmed that the theft in north Wales caused the network downtime for most of Sunday.

She said: "There was a robbery of some cabling in north Wales and that caused parts of the network to go down. The Midlands, parts of the north-west and south-east, and north Wales were affected."

Several Reg readers emailed us to complain about the problem. Vodafone is working with local police who are investigating the theft.

Normal service was restored overnight. ®