Virgin mobile plays down teething problems

Virgin Mobile attempted to play down problems as the new network struggled with teething troubles this week.

Users have experienced difficulties making calls and using their voicemail, and customer support lines registered engaged tones when they tried to get problems fixed.

A spokesman for Virgin Mobile - a joint venture between Virgin and One2One - described a report in today's Financial Times detailing the problems as "grossly exaggerated" and "sensationalised". He denied that Virgin's support centres had been "overwhelmed" with complaints but admitted a number of problems.

Last week Richard Branson wrote an apology to the 50,000 registered users of the Virgin Network after he became aware of the glitches.

Virgin Mobile admitted to problems with faulty SIM-card software, technical glitches preventing access to voicemail and network congestion due to an upgrade.

Virgin Mobile refused to blame One2One for the faults, and insisted it was happy with the network's performance. It said it had performed better than any of the other operators had on launch, with far more subscribers registered.