Millions of Blackberry owners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been left without services following a server crash.
Owners of the smartphones were unable to browse the web, send email or instant messages.
The problem appears to have originated in a data centre in Slough which handles Blackberry services for the affected regions.
Blackberry UK said it knew about the problem and was “investigating”.
In a tweet sent around 14:42 BST, the company said: “Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues.”
A subsequent statement said Blackberry was: “working to resolve an issue currently impacting some Blackberry subscribers in Europe Middle East and Africa.”
It apologised for the inconvenience that the ongoing problem was causing its customers.
Earlier today mobile operators in Britain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and other nations pointed the finger at Blackberry owner RIM when replying to tweets from customers complaining about the problems.
Many corporate customers said they had not lost service, suggesting that the problem was with Blackberry’s BIS consumer systems, rather than its BES enterprise systems.
“Blackberry runs two infrastructures,” explained Simon Butler, a Microsoft Exchange consultant at Sembee.
“The understanding I have is that the BIS service has crashed.
“The business side runs on a different set of servers, although enterprise Blackberrys can still use messenger and the consumer services, so they are also affected,” said Butler.
The first signs of trouble emerged about 11:00 BST but seemed to have escalated with tags about Blackberry and its BBM service trending on Twitter.
The only functioning service on Blackberry seemed to be text messaging, prompting many users to voice their frustration online, where some lamented the loss of the free BBM network saying they did not know what to do without it. (BBC)
