BlackBerry users suffer second major service outage

BlackBerry users are again reporting problems accessing internet and email, only hours after the company said that it had resolved a server crash yesterday that affected millions of people.

In a statement at 5.50am, BlackBerry owner Research In Motion said that it had resolved problems in its infrastructure and all network services were "operating normally".

However, users across Europe started reporting in the late morning that they were again unable to access internet, email and the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service.

Writing on the BlackBerry Support Forum, a user called Katerine0203 said: "Lost all internet, emails etc, nothing since 11:30am in uk. Seems we are in for another day of service outage. No Twitter, Facebook or email at all on my phone."

Fellow user Tatianaushka said: "I'm in Slovakia, and my BBM is not working: AGAIN!!! Come on guys."

Pauld1 added: "Mine is down too in the UK. Been down since about 12 O'Clock. Did blip back after first going down and three emails came through but nothing since."

The source of the repeated crashes is understood to be a data centre in Slough which handles BlackBerry services for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

Many corporate BlackBerry users have not reported any loss of service, leading to suggestion that the problems are with BlackBerry's BIS consumer systems, rather than its BES enterprise infrastructure.

There has been no official statement as yet from RIM or BlackBerry about the second outage.

The network problems are another headache for RIM, which is increasingly being viewed as a takeover target after losing ground to other smartphones, such as Apple's iPhone.

The company last month reported a dismal set of quarterly results and admitted that its tablet computer product, the BlackBerry PlayBook, has not performed as expected.

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