From the weekend of November 16 onwards, people living in Saltdean were unable to make or receive phone calls and text messages due to the outage, leaving them cut off from friends and family.
David Cook, 78, who lives in Winton Avenue, said the incident seemed to go on for “days and days”.
He said: “On the website they said they were doing maintenance which would continue until November 27.
“I have had to walk all the way up the hill to get service from Brighton every day because I was waiting to hear back about a dentist appointment.”
David also believes the issue impacted his smart meter, as his most recent energy bill relied on estimations rather than accurate readings due to the provider not having access to it.
Another resident who lives in the Bannings Vale area of Saltdean was visited by the emergency services for a welfare check during the service outage due to concern from friends who could not reach her, leaving her “embarrassed”.
View of Saltdean from Longridge Avenue (Image: Keith Edkins/WikimediaCommons) The woman, aged 60, said: “Because I live on my own and someone couldn’t get in touch with me, they thought something happened to me.
“I had emergency services banging on my door.
“I just felt so embarrassed.
“However, I was particularly concerned about the elderly.
“One lady was going back and forth checking on the elderly people.”
She reported that a similar incident happened not long after she moved into the area, leaving residents without mobile phone service over the Christmas period, which she described as the “worst time”.
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She said: “It seems to be a bit of an ongoing issue. Of course the problem can happen again, particularly with the more high winds.
“I don’t know whether to move to another phone provider.
“We are not a third world country in Saltdean.”
David added: “The first time it was a farce.
“Over all of these years you would think they would have sorted it out.”
The woman said the communication with O2 was forever changing, with multiple reports that the issue would be fixed within 48 hours.
Service was restored at around 8pm yesterday, December 4.
O2 told The Argus that a mast in the area was temporarily out of service for scheduled upgrade works, however, following storm damage to the roof, engineers were unable to complete the job.
It said that a team has been on site carrying out repair works to the roof to ensure the site is safe and technicians have now been able to repair the equipment and restore services.
A spokesman for O2 said: “We apologise to residents in the Saltdean area who may have experienced intermittent issues with their services.
“Engineers were initially unable to carry out planned upgrade works due to storm damage, however, services have now been restored.”
Vodafone were also contacted for comment.
