Updated 13.55

THE THREE MOBILE phone network has resumed parts of its service following several hours of outage.

Three Ireland confirmed just before 2pm that customers will now be able to make calls and texts on their phones. However, the company said that internet and broadband services have not yet fully resumed.

The outage affected all customers country-wide.

The network outage comes on the same day as it was confirmed that the mobile phone operator has bought O2′s Irish operation for an estimated €850 million.

“Calls & texts are back; internet and broadband services are still intermittent and we expect full service to be restored shortly,” the company said in a tweet.

Earlier, a spokesperson for Three Ireland said the problem was caused by a transmission link failure by Virgin Media which affected Three services across Ireland.

“Three confirms its first network outage since it entered the Irish market in 2005,” the spokesperson told TheJournal.ie. “The outage follows a transmission link failure by a third party, Virgin Media.

“We have the best team working to address this and the service is expected to resume shortly. We apologise to customers for the inconvenience.”

Some customers have taken to Twitter to complain about the lack of service this morning.