London: The maker of BlackBerry said Monday that email
services have been restored on many of its smartphones, after an
unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services for large
numbers of users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. However,
Research in Motion Ltd. said that some customers may continue to
experience delays with instant messaging and browsing services. "Our
technical teams are working to return services to normal operation as
quickly as possible," the company said in a statement. "We apologise to
our customers for any inconvenience, and we will continue to provide
updates as new information becomes available."
The problems first appeared to crop up at about 1000 GMT (6 a.m.
EDT). RIM did not give an explanation for the glitch, but some
telecommunications companies in the Middle East and Europe laid the
blame at the Canadian company's door. Khaled Hegazy, Vodafone Egypt's
spokesman, said "there is a problem with the servers in Canada which is
affecting service" in the region.
The extent of the outage wasn't clear. Vodafone UK said that
customers across Britain appeared to be unable to access BlackBerry
Messenger, a free-to-use instant messaging program which has helped make
the handset popular with young people.
Across the affected regions, BlackBerry Internet access appeared to
be sporadic. Some users were able to send and receive messages, while
others using the same service provider couldn't. Among the companies
reporting problems were Qtel Qatar, Etisalat in the United Arab
Emirates, Dubai-based Du, Zain Kuwait, and the Bahrain
Telecommunications Co.
The outage occurred as RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie and other
executives were in Dubai for the annual GITEX electronics show.
Balsillie earlier in the day unveiled a new service at the show that
will soon let users of some of its latest BlackBerry phones share
documents, web links and other information with others by tapping their
smartphones together.
