ORANGE mobile phone users were left seeing red after maintenance work by the company put their machines out of use.

The service only became available late at night, after leaving people who relied on the service high and dry.

An Orange plc spokesman confirmed that Orange customers in the Darwen area were unable to make or receive calls on Tuesday.

She said: "This was due to essential maintenance and engineering work to upgrade several sites to improve the service offered to our customers in the longer term.

"The engineering work was hampered by poor weather conditions. Our engineers have worked to rectify the situation and service was restored late on Tuesday night."

Phone user Richard Done said they had not been warned beforehand that that the service would be unavailable.

He said: "No-one could contact me from work and I was in the Darwen area all afternoon."

The spokeswoman said that it would be "extremely difficult" to contact users beforehand to warn them there would be no reception, as any Orange phone user in the country could have been in Darwen that day.

Orange user Vanessa Moore of the Sunnyhurst area said she had been trying to get a signal all day and had been inconvenienced by the situation.

The spokeswoman added: "We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused during this period."