BlackBerry Outage Affects Vodafone Customers

Vodafone customers with a BlackBerry were left without access to email, Internet and BlackBerry Messenger following another BlackBerry outage this morning.

The outage comes less than a year after a major service disruption left BlackBerry users around the world without data services for several days, and coincides with the launch of the rival iPhone 5 smartphone.

Vodafone confirmed to TechWeekEurope that its customers were having difficulties using BlackBerry services and appeared to suggest that it was a problem with RIM.

BlackBerry Outage

“We are aware that some customers are experiencing problems using BlackBerry services such as email, internet and BBM in Europe, Middle East and Africa,” said a company spokesperson. “RIM are working on fixing this as a priority and we are in regular communication with them.  We expect updates shortly.”

RIM also admitted the outage and promised to solve it as soon as possible.

“We are currently experiencing a BlackBerry service issue impacting some users in Europe, Middle East and Africa,” said a spokesperson. “All relevant support teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologize to any customers who may be affected.”

It appears as though the outage is limited to Vodafone customers at this point. An O2 spokesperson told TechWeekEurope that it was closely monitoring the situation at RIM, but that none of its customers appeared to have any problems with their BlackBerry service. EE had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

The service disruption is a massive blow to the smartphone manufacturer which is struggling to reverse its fortunes. RIM’s reputation was damaged severely after last year’s outage and the company has recently posted huge losses and announced plans to cut 5,000 jobs.

Much of its hopes rest on the launch of smartphones running the perpetually delayed BlackBerry OS 10 operating system, with handsets due to be released in early 2013.

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