Some customers of mobile telecommunications network O2 were left with limited access to voice, text and data services earlier this week following an incident of ‘theft and vandalism’ at the company’s East London facility.

The incident affected customers in East and North London, Sussex and Kent, the company revealed in a blog post.

"This was a well organised theft which targeted this operations site," it said. "We have the full support of the police in investigating this incident."

Services were restored within the day.

Earlier this year, a theft at Vodafone’s Basingstoke data centre denied thousands of customers access to its network.

Other incidents of data centre theft in the UK include an "Ocean’s Eleven-style" heist on Verizon Business’s North London facility in 2007, and a break in at Cable&Wireless’s Watford site that took the Financial Times’ website offline.