Update 00:05
I managed to get to the O2 service status where they have a tool to check coverage in your area…
Live Results for Leeds, Leeds
Nearly 11 hours and no real update, you’d think it was a free service or something.
At about 2pm this afternoon I thought my HTC was acting up again (which it does daily anyway) but after a combination of switching to / from airplane mode, restarting the phone and finally a power off; it still wouldn’t get a connection to O2.
After a Google I saw that BBC had already published a story with O2 having published an update on their status page.
“We are currently seeing a problem on our network affecting some of our customers. Those customers affected will have difficulty making or receiving calls, sending texts or using data. Our Engineers are dealing with the problem as a priority and we hope to restore full service as soon as possible,”
It’s been about 8 hours now, still no coverage, and no updates. The O2 status page appears to have been taken offline (most likely due to the number of customers hitting the page), perhaps some heavy caching and capacity planning on the status service might have meant O2 could keep customers informed. Alas, they seem reluctant to give any kind of update; I don’t think they actually know what has happened as they don’t seem to be able to gauge the scale of outage.
I was a bit concerned that I will have missed several important phone calls this afternoon, and most likely have, as the divert to voice mail doesn’t appear to be working; dialling my mobile number I get a very long (30 second) pause before hearing that the ‘number dialled is incorrect’. 
worrying
I’ve been with O2 for over 8 years and I’m apparently a Gold customer, haven’t heard a dicky bird from them; not even an email to notify of the service outage. Think it might be time to switch providers, when and if O2 get the service back online that is.
Has anyone else experienced an outage?
I wondered why i was unable to ring you, said number not recognized
fuck o2