BlackBerry Online Services Crash Again

BlackBerry users have been cut off from online services once again, after Research in Motion (RIM) said it had fixed the problems that caused an outage on Monday.

A spokesman for O2 told the Telegraph that some users have been unable to send emails, access the Internet or use BlackBerry Messenger this afternoon.

“Some areas have messaging delays and impaired browsing,” wrote the company on its BlackBerryHelp Twitter account. “We’re working to restore normal service as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile T-Mobile UK Support tweeted: “We’re sorry some #BlackBerry users are still experiencing problems. BlackBerry are looking into it urgently and hope to resolve it soon.”

Data centre failure?

The first outage began for some customers at around 11am on Monday morning, with Vodafone UK customer services claiming that it had affected 80 percent of UK BlackBerry users on all mobile networks. Users were still able to make telephone calls and send and receive text messages.

Several corporate customers reportedly did not lose service, indicating that the problem may have affected RIM’s BIS systems, used by consumers, while leaving the BES enterprise infrastructure unaffected.

The source of the outage is believed to have been a server problem at RIM’s data centre in Slough. The Slough data centre provides all of RIM’s BlackBerry online services, according to the Telegraph.

RIM issued a statement at 5.50am BST on Tuesday morning saying services were operating normally. The company offered an apology but gave no further details about what had caused the outage.

However, connectivity problems were recorded again from around 1pm today.