The Esat Digifone network suffered widespread failure yesterday, leaving customers unable to make or receive cellular telephone calls throughout the country for much of the evening.

According to customers, Esat customer support said a switch in the Dublin area failed around mid-afternoon.

This lead to a dramatic increase in call traffic through alternative switches outside Dublin, causing another switch in the Tipperary area to go out of service.

Eventually the whole service went down.

A spokeswoman for Esat Digifone last night apologised for the failure and said the cause of the incident was still being examined. The breakdown happened at peak time on the network and the visit of the US President, Mr Clinton, and a 2FM phone competition played a part in causing the network to fail.