Aug 23 Mobile Internet Outage

Aug 23 Mobile Internet Outage
Ok so, I woke up a couple of hours ago &, as is my wont, tried to get online to find out what's been happening whilst I was asleep. The Horror! Whatever sites I tried, all I got was a 403 Error. Well, net access on my moby is always unpredictable so I waited: no joy. Switched off & on: no joy. Waited some more... rang my service provider.
Apparently this was "a known issue" & "global" which had been going on for 5hrs & engineers were working to fix the problem: ETA 2-3hrs.
Well, I wasn't satisfied because this isn't the 1st time I've been frustrated by poor service, so I told the bloke I wanted a refund on my bill. He responded calmly & slightly patronisingly with the tiny cost of what I'd lost, ie £5/month, it'll be a couple of hours, etc.
"What, you want a refund of 20p?" he asked, incredulously.
"Actually, I think I do." I proposed, having made a quick guesstimate of the cost.
He actually did refund me £0.30 - without any explanation as to why 30, 20 or the exact cost of 0.67 pence/hour.
Why bother? Well, I obviously dont need a few pence, but it seems to me that there are a great many situations in life where a few pence/cents etc. get lost in the workings of our system, but it's very rare indeed that we ordinary people are on the receiving end of such laissez faire, so I just thought if I'm not the only subscriber to insist on proper treatment, maybe the dent in the balance sheet will prompt better service in future.
Then I started wondering... Wasn't something supposed to happen on Aug 22nd? Before writing this post I checked a few sites, but there's not even anything about the outage, let alone breaking news from eye-witnesses of whatever is going down.
So, fellow ATSers, what has been happening whilst I was asleep? Does anything seem like it would have benefitted TPTB to prevent mobile net access? How bad was this outage, & where was affected? Am I a paranoid loon? How will anyone know that TSHTF if pix &/or vids cant provide credible proof?

This link, to an ATS thread, may interest you. It's about net speeds and outages all over the US. Began on the 19th of this month.

Slow internet - Nationwide?

This may be nothing, but a Electricity line literally "blew" the other side of the village where I live and engineers/Fire fighters blamed it on Natural Gas (which is impossible in the Geology where we live as its Sedimentary rock made of sandstone and Grit.)
Literally the Electric Mains blew (or was blown) and now someone is covering it up for no apparent reason, or for any explanative motive that I can think of other than to "tap" into peoples Electrical useage.

reply to post by Misfit thanks for that Misfit, I'll have a look now.

Well, I probably should have posted my experience in that other thread Anyway, if this thread doesn't die, I think its worth considering the rip off & complaining angle.
I did some more today, because I could get no connection to the net whatsoever from last evening. In fact I had to get new settings sent from my service provider to get back on...
WTF?