RIM doesn't usually explain the cause of its outages and disruptions. In the past, those outages have lasted one or two days and only in a certain region of a country or a portion of a continent, not over several continents as happened Monday and Tuesday.

In March 2010, there was in both North America and the U.K. on Wi-Fi-ready BlackBerry devices that were not connected to Wi-Fi. A more severe in North America was related to a BlackBerry Messenger update.

Wireless carriers, including and had informed their customers via Twitter at 10 a.m. ET Tuesday that RIM was working on the problems. T-Mobile UK said any refunds due would be a matter for RIM to resolve.

Users on also took note of the problems Monday. One contributor, MrTuck, reported that "50% of the population with BlackBerries across Europe, Middle East and Africa are unable use their Internet, BlackBery Messenger, Facebook Twitter, Email and other applications." He noted that calls and texts were working normally at the time.

Some UK reports said the Monday problem seemed to be related to BlackBerry Internet Service customers, who are mostly consumers and small businesses.