BBM messaging down as second outage hits BlackBerry users
Server problems lead to loss of service for millions of users
11 October, 2011 by IT Reviews Staff
BlackBerry Messenger services suffered their second major outage today, after server problems yesterday meant millions of customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa lost the ability to send messages via RIM's BlackBerry handsets, or access the Internet through their BlackBerry devices.
At about 13:46 PM (BST) today, UK arm of T-Mobile has confirmed "European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network run by BlackBerry's manufacturer RIM, which is affecting all mobile operators", reports thinq. No official statement has yet been forthcoming from RIM.
No confirmation has been given as to the reasons behind yesterday's loss of service, which began at 11:00 AM BST, but the BBC claims that the outage, which lasted for nearly 20 hours, was due to server problems at RIM's data centre in Slough.
A RIM spokesperson said: "We're investigating, and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused whilst this is resolved."
Normal service was not resumed until 9PM (BST) last night. BlackBerry said, "The issue was resolved and services are operating normally. We apologise to those customers who were impacted for any inconvenience", said Recombu.
Today's disruption appears similarly widespread. Batelco, a Bahrain network, tweeted this afternoon: "Bahrain is experiencing service difficulties with Blackberry. RIM is currently working on solving the issue. Sorry for the inconvenience."
In the UK, O2 confirmed a re-occurrence of the outage and said that BlackBerry users are not able to access the Internet or send/receive BBM Messages or emails.
