Vodafone says sorry, offers free data

Vodafone has offered up an olive branch to its WA customers, providing free data over the weekend following yesterday's network outages.

In a blog post released this morning about the incident yesterday which left thousands of its WA customers without a signal, Vodafone chief technology officer Benoit Hanssen offered his apologies.

"I want to say sorry to our customers for any network issues you experienced today and let you know exactly what happened," Mr Hanssen said.

"At approximately (9am WA time) services across WA were impacted by a transmission network failure.

"As we were restoring services at approximately 1.00pm (AEST), problems occurred which had an impact on our network nationally."

The outage brought immediate outrage on Twitter, with the hashtag #vodafail - used during its disastrous network outages in 2010 and 2011 - being reinstated by its irate customers.

Mr Hanssen moved to ensure its customers the outage was a one off event.

"Over the past three years we've completely rebuilt our 3G and 3G+ networks to ensure you have fast reliable mobile coverage," he said.

"Last year, we launched a lightning-fast 4G network right around Australia."

"While no network can guarantee it will not experience issues from time to time, we're working to ensure it doesn't happen again."

From a peak of 7.5 million customers in 2010, Vodafone's market share across the country has dissolved to 5 million, anchoring it well-and-truly in third spot in the telco ladder behind Telstra (15.8 million mobile customers) and Optus (9.43 million customers).

Many Twitter users were yesterday declaring a desire to leave the company following the outage.