Blackberry Service Out Across UK, Europe, Mideast, Africa

As if Blackberry maker Research-in-Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) didn’t already have enough problems.

Blackberry services have crashed in Europe, Middle East and Africa, according to various reports, yet another blow to the struggling handset maker which has steadily been losing market share to iPhones and Android devices.

BBC noted that the blackout apparently was caused by a server crash at a data center in Slough, England, which immediately cancelled services for millions of users across three continents.

Blackberry UK said it was aware of the problem and is “working to resolve” it. In a tweet, the company indicated: Some users in [Europe-Middle East-Africa] are experiencing issues.

Ironically, RIMM shares are up 2.4 percent in New York trading.

Computerworld-UK reported that BlackBerry customers on all British networks and other countries are “suffering from an extensive data outage, cutting them off from e-mail, instant messaging, and web access.”

Vodafone UK customer services told Computerworld UK that they estimate the outage is impacting 80 percent of UK BlackBerry users on all mobile networks, not just Vodafone's.

The outage reportedly began just before 10 a.m. (London time)

Various mobile operators in Britain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and other countries directly blamed RIM for the service outage.

As a consequence, Blackberry customers (who can still send text messages), flooded Twitter with complaints about the disruption, thereby making #BlackBerry the top-trending subject on the site.

RIM has not released any public details about why the outage occurred.

Computerworld noted that Blackberry suffered a major outage in Canada and parts of Latin America last month. Last year, customers in the U.K. and U.S. endured at least two outages.