GIFFGAFF, O2, Three, and Vodafone are down – just as millions of people are self-isolating or working from home due to coronavirus.

All of the companies have confirmed customers may experience problems making and receiving calls.

BT, EE, Tesco Mobile, and Virgin Media also appear to be impacted, according to monitoring website Down Detector.

It comes as people across the country are self-isolating to avoid against spreading coronavirus – and many will be relying on broadband and mobiles to carry on working.

On the mobile front, there are 790 reports of problems at O2, while Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile, which piggyback off O2's network are also experiencing issues.

Down Detector reports 180 issues at Giffgaff and 251 at Tesco Mobile.

Elsewhere, 541 people are reporting problems with fellow mobile provider EE, 168 say they're having issues with Three, and 243 say they're having problems with Vodafone.

A Giffgaff spokesperson said: "We are aware that some customers may be experiencing issues with our voice service.

"Our technical teams are investigating. We apologise for any inconvenience. Updates will be shared here for Giffgaff as soon they are available."

An O2 spokesperson added: "Some customers may be experiencing issues when making and receiving voice calls on our 2G, 3G and 4G networks.

"Our mobile data and messaging services and O2 Wifi are not affected. This is a cross industry issue and our technical teams continue to investigate, working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

A Three UK spokesperson added: "We are aware of an issue affecting around 3 per cent of voice calls. We apologise for any inconvenience and our team is working to fix this ASAP. The rest of the network is stable."

Vodafone says around 9 per cent of voice calls on 3G weren't going through, although adds that the problems have now been fixed.

Elsewhere, 288 people are currently reporting problems with Virgin Media and 177 with BT although it's unclear if these issues relate to the companies' broadband or mobile services.

There hasn't been a similar spike in complaints of problems with Sky or TalkTalk.

It's not what's caused the outage but it could be people overloading the networks.

One expert in the US told Bloomberg that home broadband networks, in particular, "could get overloaded" if everyone is working from home.

But Openreach, which provides most of the broadband cables around the UK, told The Sun it's confident the network can handle home-working on a mass scale.

It said: “The types of applications that people use heavily in the evenings at home – like Facebook, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky Go etc – use more bandwidth than typical working tools like emails, document collaboration software or even voice and video conferencing.

"As an example, the Liverpool versus Everton match, which was streamed live by Amazon Prime in December, drove significant peaks in traffic over our network without causing any major issues for our customers."

The Sun has contacted all of the firms involved and will update this story as soon as we get a response.

'There's something weird going on with the phones'

One person tweeted: "At least here in Leeds (UK), some cellphone companies are almost down. I use @O2 and @EE on my work phone and @VodafoneUK on my personal phone, and all of those companies phones can barely complete a call.

"There's something weird going on with the phones over here."

Another wrote: "Oh god not there's a virus in the tech! @O2 I can't make or receive calls!! Super worried that none can get in touch with me. #virus #o2down"

Someone else said: "@EE can you tell me if there are network probs today? Whenever I try to dial out it says call failed."

Another wrote: "Working from home becomes increasingly more difficult when your internet keeps dropping out!

"@virginmedia sort your life out. Seriously, some people trying to be professional."

Telecoms providers have recently come under fire for upping prices, with Virgin Mobile hiking costs by up to £80 a year for 140,000 customers.

Sky is upping prices by up to £72 a year in April.

BT is also hiking mobile, broadband and home phone prices by up to £11.40 year this month.

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