Blackberry down again as service outages spread to Brazil, Argentina and Chile
A woman works on her Blackberry phone.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Blackberry users in Africa, Europe, India and the Middle East were hit by service outages for a second day in a row, as frustration grew among the tens of millions of customers affected by the unexplained crash.
The second Blackberry blackout came only a few hours after Research in Motion (RIM), the Canada-based maker of the smartphone, announced that services were operating normally and the issue had been resolved.
RIM admitted Tuesday that the crash had also affected users in Latin America, with service disruptions reported in Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
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In South Africa, some Blackberry users were without any subscriber services for much of Monday and Tuesday, and were only able to make calls and send text messages. In other cases, the disruption was limited to the popular Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service.
"Some areas have messaging delays and impaired browsing. We’re working to restore normal service as quickly as possible," RIM's official Twitter feed said.
On Monday, RIM apologized to its customers in Europe, India, the Middle East and Africa. The service outages are believed to be caused by a server crash at RIM's data center in Slough, southeast England, BBC News says.
But the company has yet to clarify the source of the continuing problem.
"Such an inconvenience, I think that my days with Blackberry are numbered," wrote one Blackberry user on a South African news website. "Understandably things go wrong, but it would be nice if Blackberry would at least comment and take responsibility for what is happening."
Blackberry users also vented their frustrations on Twitter.
"What did one Blackberry user say to the other Blackberry user? Nothing," read one popular tweet.
RIM's reputation may suffer from the prolonged Blackberry service outages. The company has already been losing market share in North America to Android phones and Apple's iPhone.
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