BlackBerry blackout hits millions

Millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were cut off on Monday after servers in the UK went down.

Millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were cut off on Monday after servers in the UK went down.

Published Oct 11, 2011

Share

Millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were cut off on Monday after servers in the UK went down.

Many users reported not being able to receive or send e-mail, use instant messaging or browse the internet, though the problems did not appear to be the same for each user, or affect all users.

Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry, said in a statement : “We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“We're investigating, and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused whilst this is resolved.”

Later on Monday, RIM said that all services had been restored and apologised again for any inconvenience.

The company has not said what caused the problem.

The problem started around 11am, leaving users unable to browse the web, receive instant messages or access e-mail.

Many Blackberry users tweeted about their frustrations.

Said one: “It is World Mental Health Day and Blackberry users are going mental!”

Christa Botha, the South African spokesman for RIM, manufacturers of the popular smartphone, said the server crash did not affect all local users, TimesLive reported.

It is unknown how many South Africans own BlackBerry smartphones, but more than 100 million handsets have been sold worldwide.

RIM has struggled this year with weaker sales of the BlackBerry smartphone against rivals like Apple's iPhone, various models from HTC, and other handsets running Google's Android software.

The company's share price fell 0.56 percent to $23.23 on Monday after the outage news, and was down 60 percent from the beginning of the year. - Sapa, AFP, The Independent

Related Topics: