EE's Orange webmail has been unavailable for many users for about a day, after the service suffered problems starting on Tuesday evening.

The firm said a fibre-optic cable had been cut and could not say when it would be fixed. An EE spokeswoman said a small proportion of the 30 million users of its network had been affected. Some customers expressed dissatisfaction at what they said was a lack of communication from the firm. One BBC viewer complained that EE had not posted an explanation on its website. John Edwards said he and his wife were worried that they would miss an event because they could not print tickets held in their inbox. "You have got holiday tickets, train tickets, theatre tickets, tennis tickets - you name it. The system today with a lot of these suppliers is to do it by email. People cannot get their tickets," he told the BBC. EE has engaged with some affected users on Twitter and posted a statement on the website-monitoring service Down Detector.

"A lot of people are complaining bitterly about the lack of information or the fact that the system has crashed. "Why do they not make a public announcement and be quite open about [it]?" asked Mr Edwards. "That could be done through Twitter but I am not a Twitter user, I am not a Facebook user." EE also fielded complaints from customers on Twitter.....Read more here