A BlackBerry network outage that prevented users in Canada and the Asia Pacific region from sending and receiving emails and text messages has been resolved, the company says.
Customer complaints to social media sites spiked around 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to the website Canadianoutages.com. The site said 75 per cent of complaints were about problems with sending and receiving messages, while 22 per cent of customers said they were unable to use BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM.
The company issued a statement shortly before 3 p.m. ET, saying that service had been restored.
“BlackBerry can confirm that all service issues impacting some users in Canada and the Asia Pacific region have been resolved,” company spokesperson Lisette Kwong said in the statement. “Thank you for your patience.”
Kwong would not specify how many customers the company estimates may have been affected by the outage.
One BlackBerry Curve user had posted to Canadianoutages.com that her BBM messages, text messages and emails were not being delivered. Another user said he was having “no problems with BB10 on my Z30.”
@CTVNews Yes, the #blackberryoutage does affect me, but I can check my personal email when I get home - I'm sure the world won't end
— Sean Kean (@srckean) March 4, 2014
@CTVNews I am working from home and no emails!!! No distraction! Perfect!
— Anita Tatar (@anitatatar) March 4, 2014
This was not the first widespread service outage for BlackBerry. In 2011, when the company was known as Research in Motion, a massive, days-long worldwide outage affected millions of customers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, and parts of South America. At the time, the company blamed a failure in a part of its European infrastructure, and a subsequent failure in a backup system.
