Virgin Mobile outage leaves thousands without service

With the company's website also down, representatives were left with no choice but to alert users on its Facebook page posting: "The fault began early this morning and is impacting customers' ability to SMS, call and use data."

The statement, however, provided little comfort to customers who have since taken to social media to voice their anger – many also angry that they had to check

On their Facebook page, user George Bousamra wrote: "You have had 10 hours to notify customers about the issue. Why do I need to follow your Facebook or Twitter account to get updates?" While Tayla Rose wrote: "Well… This happens all too often. Off to buy a pigeon to increase the reliability of my communications."

Customer Reed Robinson told ninemsn that he's had enough with the provider's poor service.

"The outage is the last straw in a long line of poor customer experiences.

"I will be terminating my contract and moving to an alternate mobile provider," he said.

Virgin has promised to keep customers informed on their Facebook and Twitter page of any developments.