BlackBerry services hit by second day blackout

LONDON. - BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were hit with service disruptions to their smartphones for a second day yesterday after an unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services for large numbers of users around the world.

Research in Motion Ltd, which makes BlackBerry devices, acknowledged there were on-going issues yesterday, hours after it said services were operating normally and the issue responsible for delays in subscriber services a day earlier had been resolved.

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, which operates in the United Arab Emirates, 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."

And South Africa's Vodacom told its subscribers that the issues were affecting multiple networks and many countries.