UAE users unhappy and complaining; Etisalat tweets customers
A series of failures in Research In Motion's (RIM) private network has disrupted BlackBerry service to millions of customers across four continents.
Extensive delays hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India on Monday and the problems spread to Brazil, Chile and Argentina on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
"The messaging and browsing delays being experienced... were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," the company said in a emailed update late on Tuesday afternoon in Toronto.
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UAE users unhappy
Meanwhile, BlackBerry users in the UAE continued to experience service disruptions on Tuesday afternoon till evening, even after services were partially restored on Monday after a seven-hour outage.
A BlackBerry employee at Gitex Technology Week this afternoon confirmed that the service was fully restored in the UAE but refused to specify what had caused the problem.
The Big Story: Partial outage in UAE BlackBerry service
"The technical team has rectified the issue," the employee who did not want to be identified told 'Emirates 24|7.'
Research in Motion (RIM) makers of BlackBerry on Monday had claimed that the services had been restored and were operating normally.
But early Tuesday afternoon, once again Twitter was active with updates about the latest outage.
Etisalat in its tweet informed its subscribers "RIM problems are affecting some BlackBerry customers again today unfortunately. We will update you with info as soon as we get it from them."
The problem started in the afternoon although some users said they have been experiencing some sort of glitches since Tuesday morning.
"I subscribe to du and my BBM service was restored on Monday morning. But I started having problems again from this afternoon. It is a bit irritating," said K Rony, a sales executive in Dubai.
Disruptions in Europe, Middle East, Latin America and Africa
Associated Press reported that BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina were hit with service disruptions to their smartphones for a second day after an unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services for large numbers of users around the world.
BlackBerry's maker says smartphone users in Latin America and India also are also experiencing problems with messaging and browsing services.
Research in Motion, which makes BlackBerry devices, acknowledged there were ongoing issues on Tuesday, hours after it said services were operating normally and the issue responsible for delays in subscriber services a day earlier had been resolved.
"Some areas have messaging delays and impaired browsing," Blackberry said on Twitter, adding it was working to "restore normal service as quickly as possible."
In Britain, Vodafone UK told customers via Twitter that service was not fully restored. Rival T-Mobile UK blamed "a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network" which it said was affecting all mobile operators. There were also reports of problems elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain.
The disruptions were also felt in the Middle East and Africa.
Etisalat apologised for "the further interruption" to Blackberry services, "once again due to RIM problems."
And Kenya's Safaricom Ltd. said on Twitter that its Blackberry customers were experiencing a "technical fault," while South Africa's Vodacom told subscribers the issues were affecting multiple networks and countries.
There were no reports of any problems in the US.
Angry smartphone users also used Twitter to vent frustration with the company and bemoaned the loss of their messaging capabilities, questioning why the company took so long to restore services.
© Emirates 24|7 2011
