BlackBerry smartphone users in Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina experienced a service disruption since Monday. Research in Motions(RIM) said early Tuesday that the problems were resolved and that services were operating normally, but hours later it acknowledged that the disruptions were continuing.
The company which operates the dedicated network for BlackBerry users said today that the disruptions were caused by a “core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.” The company apologised for the inconvenience.
In Britain, Vodafone UK told customers via Twitter that service was not fully restored. As for T-Mobile UK, it noted “over the past 24 hours, BlackBerry products have experienced a number of problems with email, internet and messaging services. This is due to a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network run by BlackBerry’s manufacturer RIM, which is affecting all mobile operators.” There also were reports of problems elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain.
Etisalat, which operates in the United Arab Emirates, apologized for “the further interruption” to Blackberry services, “once again due to RIM problems.”
Kenya’s Safaricom Ltd. said on Twitter that its Blackberry customers were experiencing a “technical fault,” while South Africa’s Vodacom told subscribers the issues were affecting multiple networks and countries.
Malaysia mobile operators such as Maxis, Celcom, DiGi & U Mobile have yet to reports any BlackBerry service outage.
