Demand for the iPhone Crashes O2's Website

A flood of customers visiting the O2 UK website this morning to pre-order the 3G iPhone caused the sales part of the website to crash under the traffic load. Pre-orders from registered customers were permitted from 8am this morning - following a SMS alert being sent to prospective customers, but the site was reported to be down within an hour.

"Due to extremely high levels of demand, the O2 online shop is temporarily unavailable. We are working to restore the service as quickly as possible. Customers who are unable to place an order online can still go into store from 8.02am on 11 July, although we urge people to get down there early as demand is expected to be very high," said O2 in a statement.

Customers were also told to phone the call centre if they got to an error page, but the call centre has been reported to be unable to take phone transactions until the official launch date, this coming Friday.

The company has split its stock of iPhones roughly in half, with one batch reserved for online sales and the other for its own retail outlets.  The company says that it has had some 200,000 people register as being interested in the 3G iPhone.

Separately, O2 is to make the iPhone available through selected independent retailers who are part of the operators "B2B Centre of Excellence" program in the near future.

Posted to the site on 7th July 2008