Cellular1.07.2012

BlackBerry outage strikes again

Numerous South African BlackBerry users were left without services on Saturday after another global BlackBerry outage.

Social networks, including the MyBroadband forums and Twitter, were abuzz with users reporting problems using their BlackBerry Internet Service.

It is understood that a problem on the Research in Motion (hence BlackBerry) network was to blame for the problems related to BlackBerry services.

Vodacom said on Twitter that “RIM has confirmed that there was an international service issue. Some browsing and BBM issues may still persist. We’ll keep you updated.”

Numerous MTN subscribers also complained about BlackBerry problems, but the company did not release a statement and opted to handle each complaint individually.

The Middle East based news website The National reported that numerous BlackBerry users reported problems in their region, andding that the problems lie with RIM. “A RIM spokeswoman said the company would issue a statement today,” the UAE based news source said.

To date RIM has not issued any statement to local journalists to explain the outage.  The RIM website also does not have any statement regarding the outage.

This outage comes less than 9 months after a previous global outage which lasted for days.  During this outage RIM was slow to respond to users which drew sharp criticism from their customers and observers.

Update: Official statement from RIM

“We experienced a service issue which may have affected some of our customers in certain parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Some minor issues relating to browsing and BlackBerry Messenger may still persist, but all other services are operating as normal. We apologise to any customers in these regions who may have been inconvenienced.”

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