RIM claims BlackBerry services are returning after network fix

Embattled smartphone manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has said it is close to fixing the issues affecting its networks across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India that knocked out messaging and internet services for millions of users.

The firm said it is seeing a noticeable improvement in its services and that it is continuing to monitor the situation to ensure the problems are sorted.

"From 6am today [Thursday], all services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement. We continue to monitor the situation 24x7 to ensure ongoing stability," it said.

There was no update on services in North America, although it is likely that problems there will shortly be resolved too, given that they are a knock-on effect of the outages in Europe.

RIM confirmed the issues were caused by a switch failure that brought down a server at its Slough facility, and interrupted service in Europe had created a backlog of messages that was causing service to slow or fail around the globe.

The firm admitted on Wednesday that its first attempts to solve the problem had failed and that it was unsure which services were affected on both the BIS and BES platforms.

A raft of BlackBerry customers on the BES platform confirmed to V3 that they had seen problems with their services.

The incident has been highly embarrassing for RIM, which is currently struggling to compete with key rivals in the smartphone and tablet space, as the problems have undermined the strength of its network infrastructure, one of the firm's key selling points.