Blackberry Suffers Service Outage in Africa, Middle East and Europe (Updated with RIM Statement)

Right now there are some reports that RIM is suffering major problems with its Blackberry Internet Service in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Users have been unable to access the web, instant messages through BBM or email.
Right now not one of Blackberry’s twitter accounts have admitted to the problem, with worldwide cellular operators rather sending out updates.
@vodacom tweeted: “BB is still having issues in Europe, Middle East & Africa. Waiting for an update from BB on a fix”. Twitter users have been quick to complain – although they needed to find another device to tweet from. Blackberry is trying very hard to promote its products against ever increasing competition Android and Apple iPhone, so this does not bode well for them.
We will be keeping an eye out for when everything is up and running again. RIM – you have some explaining to do.
Updated official statement from RIM:
“We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa.  We’re investigating, and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused whilst this is resolved.”
Update: Blackberry services go down for a second consecutive day (11/10/2011)
Update: Official Statement from RIM after Blackberry services remain down for a third consecutive day (12/10/2011)
“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.  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 apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed.”
Update: Official Statement from RIM  as Blackberry services return to normal (13/10/2011)
“From 6am BST today, all services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement.  We continue to monitor the situation 24×7 to ensure ongoing stability.  Thank you for your patience.”