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Millions of
Blackberry owners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been left
without services following a server crash.
Owners of
the smartphones were unable to browse the web, send email or instant messages.
The problem
appears to have originated in a data centre in Slough which handles Blackberry
services for the affected regions.
Blackberry
UK said it knew about the problem and was "investigating".
In a tweet
sent around 14:42 BST, the company said: "Some users in EMEA are
experiencing issues."
A
subsequent statement said Blackberry was: "working to resolve an issue
currently impacting some Blackberry subscribers in Europe Middle East and
Africa."
It
apologised for the inconvenience that the ongoing problem was causing its
customers.
Earlier on
10 October mobile operators in the UK, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and other nations
pointed the finger at Blackberry owner RIM when replying to tweets from
customers complaining about the problems.
Business
and consumer
Many
corporate customers said they had not lost service, suggesting that the problem
was with Blackberry's BIS consumer systems, rather than its BES enterprise
systems.
"Blackberry
runs two infrastructures," explained Simon Butler, a Microsoft Exchange
consultant at Sembee.
"The
understanding I have is that the BIS service has crashed.
"The
business side runs on a different set of servers, although enterprise
Blackberrys can still use messenger and the consumer services, so they are also
affected," said Mr Butler.
Such a
major outage will still come as unwelcome news to Blackberry's owner RIM, which
has been losing market share to smartphone rivals - in particular Apple's
iPhone.
Many
corporate clients have switched to the device after Apple made a concerted
effort to improve its support for secure business email systems.
"If
you have got companies that are shifting their allegiance to other players in
the market and you stop being able to provide them that concrete, reliable
service, then that's going to have a detrimental effect," said Stuart
Miles of Pocket-Lint.com.
Online
complaints
The first
signs of trouble emerged about 11:00 BST but seemed to have escalated with tags
about Blackberry and its BBM service trending on Twitter.
The only
functioning service on Blackberry seemed to be text messaging, prompting many
users to voice their frustration online.
In an early report, The Daily Telegraph quoted one Twitter user as suffering "serious
Blackberry outrage".
Others
lamented the loss of the free BBM network saying they did not know what to do
without it.
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