For the second day in a row, BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) were yesterday experiencing a malfunction of Internet and messaging services.

Users were unable to browse the web, access their emails, or BlackBerry Messager services. However, they were able to send ordinary sms and make calls.

MTN Rwanda, the country’s BlackBerry service provider, said that the Canadian manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, ‘Research in Motion (RIM)’ is experiencing technical problems.

"This is the second day the system is breaking down and it’s affecting almost 50 per cent of BlackBerry users across the EMEA,” MTN’s Chief Marketing Officer, Yvonne Manzi Makolo told The New Times by telephone.

Yesterday, MTN issued a statement to its customers saying: "It’s unfortunate BlackBerry services are down again. The issue is affecting all BlackBerry customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and it is still beyond our control.

We do apologise for the inconvenience and will inform you once the service is up and running again.”

Makolo said that MTN Rwanda had received a statement from RIM saying the company was working to resolve an issue.

Despite earlier statements by Research In Motion (RIM) that the company had restored email services to millions of its BlackBerry users, the services broke down again only hours later.

The meltdown started 11a.m, on Monday, and had still not been fully resolved by Tuesday evening. RIM has about 70 million BlackBerry subscribers around the world.

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