BlackBerry service in Mideast partially restored

Some BlackBerry services have been restored in the Middle East while Research in Motion (RIM) has been working around the clock to fix its BlackBerry services around the world, downed for the most part since Monday afternoon. Robin Bienfait, chief information officer, said in a statement provided to Gulf News  onThursday morning that the company acknowledges BlackBerry smartphones have become part of people's business strategy and that the blackout the last few days has been frustrating. "I want to first apologise for the service interruptions and delays many of you have been experiencing this week. You've depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we're letting you down. We are taking this very seriously and have people around the world working around the clock to address this situation. We believe we understand why this happened and we are working to restore normal service levels in all markets as quickly as we can, " he said in a statement. According to Bienfait, in the Middle East as well as Europe, India and Africa, some services have been restored including email and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) but there are still some hiccups with browsing which, he said, is still unavailable. Email systems are operating and we are continuing to clear any backlogged messages. Support teams are working to minimise the impact on our customers," he said. "BBM traffic is online and traffic is passing successfully. Browsing is temporarily unavailable as the Support teams monitor service stability and continue to assess when this service can be safely brought online." North America as well as Latin America are also experiencing some restored services, he said. "We are doing everything in our power to restore regular service everywhere and to restore your trust in us," Bienfait said. A senior official, meanwhile, told the BBC on Wednesday that one of the reasons for the BlackBerry blackout turned out to that the "backup system was not working like we would expect." In a statement on Wednesday, du said that "e-mails and BlackBerry Messenger systems are back to normal. Priority is being given by RIM to clear back-logged messages and to minimise the impact. However, at the moment, browsing is unavailable as teams at RIM are monitoring service stability, and this service is expected to go on-stream at a later stage." "Support teams at RIM have added capacity to help with message delivery between regions and continents. We request our customers to restart their BlackBerry devices if they are still facing issues," du added.