Devices that are already registered with the Vodafone network appear unaffected at this time.

UPDATE 14:59
A user on Vodafone’s forum has reported that Vodafone have said that this is an issue with their infrastructure.

UPDATE 17:40
Vodafone moderators are asking users affected to report which broadband company they are with if they are affected by this issue. Should be interesting to see user responses based on the update earlier today…

UPDATE 04/10 23:28
Still no official response from Vodafone but forum users are now reporting that their Sure Signal devices are starting to function normally. Speculation around failure of devices to fall over to secondary NTP server has been suggested as the cause.

The recommendations, titled Action for Change, concluded that rural development is being stifled by locals who are protecting their views at the cost of a sustainable economy.

The full report is available here

There are currently no LTE handsets on the market, but tariffs are targeted at laptop users who are better equipped to benefit from this boost in speed. Monthly contracts are around £33 for 7.2mb/s with a 10GB limit, with the top tariff being £60 for 50mb/s with a 30GB limit. If you go over that limit they’ll drop you to 3G for the remainder of the month.

The UK’s roadmap to 4G is somewhat further behind that of Germany and the US, as the decision on what to do with our pre-allocated radio spectrum has yet to be finalised.

Utilising similar technology to Skype, HD calls will be possible between 4 of the currently available HD-voice-compatible handsets whilst in 3G reception areas.

All UK mobile operators plan to offer similar services using the 3GPP standard, delivering better compression to gather a broader range of frequencies into the call.

Of course, the HD service is only available for Orange to Orange callers for now, but the new handsets feature better noise-cancelling technology and better quality microphones so standard call quality should be improved.

Orange have kindly started offering HD demos in their high street shops, so now you can hear it for yourself.

Update 21.14 – still no word from Vodafone on the issues being seen by a number of users. Some people have reported that soft reseting their device has resolved the issue.

Update 02/09 16.32 – Vodafone have acknowledged there is an issue but are yet to provide any details on cause or number of impacted users

Update 02/09 19.22 – All services appear to have returned to normal, any one still facing issues has been advised to reset their Sure Signal device

“We can confirm that some Orange mobile customers across the UK maybe experiencing reduced data access,” an Orange spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday. “We are trying to resolve this issue as a matter of priority and would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused.”

Once the outage had started, some customers skirted the problem by opting to use 2G rather than 3G services, although others were left completely without mobile internet, according to reports.

According to a later post on the Orange website, the outage was caused by “an unusual software issue” that was exacerbated by “separate and localised” hardware failure which resulted in “some, but not all, of our mobile data customers having problems accessing the mobile Internet.”

Despite this fix, several customers are still reporting intermittent problems with 3G connection across the country.

Hmmm, it does seem strange that so many of you are noticing the same symptoms here. I have just sent an email to the Sure Signal team to see if they’re aware of any general Sure Signal issues. I’ll let you know when I hear back from them.

Eventually at 17.30 Vodafone confirmed there was an issue registering Sure Signal devices.

Firewall configurations should be updated as follows:

Allow traffic from:

• 212.183.133.177
• 212.183.133.178
• 212.183.133.179
• 212.183.131.128/26

Via these ports and protocols:

• Port 50 – TCP/IP
• Port 4500 – UDP
• Port 500 – UDP
• Port 123 – UDP