BlackBerry services inaccessible also in Romania

The Blackberry services are inaccessible to the users of mobile networks in Romania, according to a statement issued by the Association of Mobile Operators in Romania.

"The Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) which operates the BlackBerry service, announced that users of BlackBerry messaging and browsing from Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina are affected due to some problems with the central operating system of RIM."

"Among the BlackBerry users affected by these problems are also those from Romania. The Canadian company is working to get the situation solved as soon as possible", the release revealed.

This major crash which the Blackberry multipurpose phone network has been facing for several days is due to "a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure ", the Canadian group Research in Motion announced on Tuesday.

"The messaging and browsing delays experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure", the company wrote in an e-mail sent to AFP."

"Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested", RIM added.

"As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed", the release said.

"Tens of millions of BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been unable to receive or send emails and messages through their phones, following an outage at the server systems of parent company Research In Motion (RIM) in Slough, Berkshire", The Guardian informs.

As a result of the last events, the Canadian group Research in Motion has almost half of the stock market value that it had at the beginning of the year.

Users dissatisfied with BlackBerry crash

Some users of the BlackBerry services in Romania expressed dissatisfaction on the company's Facebook page or on various forums.

They claim they have been having problems since Tuesday evening.

"Yesterday (Tuesday) the BlackBerry services didn't function at all and I didn’t know why ... now I do: great ‘crash’ on RIM servers in Canada, so it can happen even to them."

"I wanted to through my phone against the wall too, my poor phone, it wasn’t its fault, nor the operator’s who I was about to call", a user wrote on the company's Facebook official page.

Translated by: Anca Toma
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University