RIM spill the beans over BlackBerry outages

RIM have revealed what has caused the worldwide BlackBerry outages this week.

BlackBerry users across the world have reported big problems accessing their email, internet and BBM services.

“The messaging and browsing delays being 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,” reads the RIM statement.

“Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. 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 apologise for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed.”

While some users on BlackBerry Enterprise servers are beginning to see services resume, a large number of BlackBerry owners are still having problems.

The timing of the outages couldn’t have been any worse; the two-or-so days of down time comes just days before the launch of iOS 5 for iPhones, and with it the iMessage IM service. With BBM one of BlackBerry’s key selling points, loyal RIM customers may be beginning to feel the grass is greener on the other side of the mobile fence these days.