Calls blackout for Free Mobile users

CUSTOMERS of mobile phone operator Free Mobile were unable to make or receive phone calls on Sunday morning.

Hundreds of users took to Twitter to flag up the problem. Attempts to make a call were met with the message: "The number you are dialling is not recognised."

It appears that text messaging and 3G internet were unaffected by the outage, which began around 10.00 and was fixed by lunchtime.

Free Mobile's Twitter feed makes no reference to the incident and it is not clear how many of the operator's 10 million customers were affected.

The operator launched in 2012 with aggressive pricing to compete against the big three established providers: SFR, Orange and Bouygues Telecom.

It was plagued by connection issues in the early days as the network could not cope with the surge in customer numbers.