RIM says BlackBerry problems due to switch failure

The messaging and browsing problems being experienced by BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) users in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America were caused by a "core switch failure" within Research in Motion's (RIM) infrastructure.

RIM revealed on Tuesday evening the reason why many of its customers had experienced email, web and text woes since Monday.

The Canadian smartphone-maker said that although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, it "did not function as previously tested".

"As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible," said the firm in a statement.

RIM apologised for the inconvenience it had caused customers, and said it would keep them updated on its progress fixing the problem.

On Monday, customers in the UK and the rest of Europe, as well as those in Africa and the Middle East, complained they were having problems with accessing the web and were not receiving emails and text messages.

RIM said on Tuesday morning that it had fixed the problem, believed to have originated from a server in Slough, but later that day RIM customers in India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina continued to be affected.

While the problems were originally believed to have affected only users of the BlackBerry Internet Service, several members of the V3 team on the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) are now reporting email problems.

A message from carrier Vodafone on one such device running BES, sent on Tuesday evening, reads: "You may still be experiencing issues with BlackBerry services. RIM is working to resolve these urgently."

RIM had no further comment on this development at the time of writing.

The outages come at a time when RIM is facing increased competition from rivals Apple and Google in the business smartphone market. RIM's reliability and security have been two of its key marketing strengths.

Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell moaned about the problems he continues to experience with BlackBerry on Twitter today.

"Day three of BlackBerry black-out. Some free advice. Explain while you fix. Apologise when you have. Recompense after," he wrote.

Later he added: "On a serious note, can someone at BlackBerry UK explain WTF is going on."