An attendee at the Blackberry 10 Jam World Tour holds one of the company's DevAlpha devices in Waterloo, Ontario, August 23, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Geoff Robins
September 21, 2012 - 6:58 AM
LONDON - BlackBerry is reporting an outage affecting users in Europe, Middle East and Africa — interrupting service for customers on the very day Apple unveiled its hot new iPhone 5.
BlackBerry announced the issues in postings on Facebook and Twitter today, and says it is urgently working to fix the troubles.
BlackBerry, made by Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM (TSX:RIM), says it apologizes to customers for the inconvenience caused.
The outage brings up unpleasant memories of troubles with emails and chat messages last year that left users bereft for three days.
In Canada and the United States, the outage was shorter, but many of the world's 70 million BlackBerry users were affected.
The timing could not have been worse as lines formed outside of Apple stores in Britain and elsewhere today as the new iPhone 5 went on sale.
News from © The Associated Press, 2012