Blackberry server crash: Email services restored

Email has been restored to Blackberry smartphones after a server crash left millions of users without any services, the company's owner RIM has said. But it warned of continuing delays with instant messaging and browsing services while it worked to correct the problem. The source of the crash is believed to be a data centre in Slough which handles Blackberry services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Earlier, Blackberry UK said it knew of the problem and was "investigating". In a statement, RIM said: "Our technical teams are working to return services to normal operation as quickly as possible. "We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience and we will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available." In a tweet sent around 14:42 BST, Blackberry UK 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". Earlier on 10 October, mobile operators in the UK, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and other nations pointed the finger at RIM when replying to tweets from customers complaining about the problems. Business and consumer 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 Mr Butler. Such a major outage will still come as unwelcome news to Blackberry's owner RIM, which has been losing market share to smartphone rivals - in particular Apple's iPhone. Many corporate clients have switched to the device after Apple made a concerted effort to improve its support for secure business email systems. "If you have got companies that are shifting their allegiance to other players in the market and you stop being able to provide them that concrete, reliable service, then that's going to have a detrimental effect," said Stuart Miles of Pocket-Lint.com. 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.