Our EE 4G and 5G service has been effectively unusable since at least April 2026, and possibly much longer. This is no longer a temporary fault or minor inconvenience. It has become a serious and unacceptable failure to provide a service that customers are paying for every month.
We regularly have to drive out of the village simply to make or receive phone calls. Think about that for a moment. In 2026, customers paying premium mobile contract prices are having to leave their homes and drive elsewhere just to use their phones.
My daughter is currently studying for her A-levels and has been forced to travel to libraries and other locations because mobile connectivity in the village is so poor. This is causing unnecessary disruption and frustration at a critical time in her education.
What concerns me most is the potential safety risk. If someone in our household needed to make an emergency call and our broadband or Wi-Fi was unavailable, what exactly are we supposed to do? Drive out of the village and hope for a signal? That cannot be an acceptable position for residents to be in.
I have been an EE customer for over 33 years, dating back to the One2One and T-Mobile days. You would think that level of loyalty would count for something. Apparently not. The response so far has amounted to little more than excuses and suggestions that customers should rely on their home broadband instead.
Let me be clear: we do not pay EE every month to use our Wi-Fi. We pay EE to provide a functioning mobile network.
The most frustrating aspect is the apparent lack of urgency. If a customer fails to honour their contract, EE acts quickly. Yet when EE fails to provide the service customers are contracted to receive, we are expected to continue paying regardless. How is that fair?
At what point does a prolonged failure to provide a service become a breach of contract?
I am now seriously considering taking this matter further and exploring whether customers affected by this ongoing outage should be entitled to terminate their contracts without penalty. It is difficult to see why customers should remain tied into agreements when the service they are paying for has effectively disappeared for months.
After 33 years of loyalty, I never thought I would say this, but unless something changes soon, I will be leaving EE at the earliest opportunity. This situation is a complete disgrace and demonstrates a shocking lack of accountability to loyal customers.
If you live in Datchworth and are experiencing the same issues, please comment below. The more evidence we can gather, the harder it will be for EE to ignore the problem.
