BlackBerry services in the UAE were restored this morning, following a seven-hour disruption on Monday. However, by early afternoon Tuesday reports started coming in from users that the service is down again

A source from Research in Motion (Rim), the makers of BlackBerry, who did not wish to be named, said: “The services were restored . We are, however, still not sure as to what caused the problem.”

While some users said they have not been able to use the messenger service, others continued to experience issues with email and browsing.

Earlier, etisalat and du customer care numbers were flooded with calls.

An etisalat call-centre representative said they started receiving complaints from users from about 2pm onwards.

Speaking at around 9pm last evening, he said “The problem is yet to be rectified. We are informing the users that the problem is from our end but from Rim,” he said.

One etisalat customer told Emirates24|7 that he had to wait for almost 12-15 minutes before he could get through to the call-centre and be told that the services were down, while several other users had already spread the word through social media.

Twitter and facebook pages were full of user comments on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service disruption.

The first twitter message from Dubai was posted at around 2pm from @sa3dooya and @dizzou, which said, “Is it just me or is there a problem with the blackberry service in Dubai?”
The initial response from the official etisalat page was, “@sa3dooya Oh dear :( Sorry to hear about that. We can check your account for you? Please DM over your name and number. Thanks”
“@dizzou  We’re unaware of any issues at the moment. Would you like us to check your connection? If so, please DM over your name and number.”

It was only at around 4pm that etisalat tweeted saying, “Thank you to everyone who has let us know about the BlackBerry interruption. Tech team are working hard to restore normal service asap.”
Du on its twitter page at around 5pm said, “We're fully aware of the ongoing degradation with BlackBerry services. We're working with RIM to rectify the outage soonest.”

EARLIER STORY
The maker of BlackBerry says it's investigating an unidentified issue affecting customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reported AP.

Research in Motion Ltd. gave few further details Monday, but telephone companies whose customers use the company's smartphones said that Internet access and BlackBerry's popular messenger service appeared to be affected.

T-Mobile UK said in messages posted online that there was an "issue with sending and receiving via the BlackBerry Messenger service as well as using BlackBerry Internet services."

It said that it and Research in Motion are looking into the matter.

3 days free use for Saudi BlackBerry users