Tweeters spoke of anywhere between 3.2 and seven million users being affected.

Today a Vodafone spokesman said: "We had a break-in overnight at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment.

"This means that some customers may be experiencing temporary loss of voice, SMS and internet services.

"We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can.

"There has been no impact on the privacy of customers' data."

The raiders struck at the Vodafone exchange in Basingstoke in the early hours.

Today the global, multi-billion pound firm was trying to find out the scale of the problem as it set to work restoring its services.

By 1pm Vodafone said it had restored all 2G and 3G voice services and was working to get voicemail and text messaging back up and running.

A spokesman for Hampshire Police confirmed that the force had been contacted with a report of a burglary at Hamilton Close, Basingstoke, at 5am today.

She confirmed that officers were at the scene with forensics experts but they could not make any further comment until later.

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