Gadgets, Outage | featured news

BlackBerry is reporting an outage affecting users in Europe, Middle East and Africa - interrupting service for customers on the very day Apple Inc. unveiled its hot new iPhone 5.

For the third time this month, Verizon Wireless is experiencing data service outages for some users of its 3G and 4G networks in various places around the country, according to customer reports.

Sporadic outages of BlackBerry messaging and email service spread to the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday, as problems stretched into the third day for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Blackberry, which has been plagued by service outages in Europe, the Middle East and India this week, reports that disruptions have spread to Latin America.

Large numbers of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been cut off from Internet and messaging services, phone companies in the affected regions said Monday. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. gave few details beyond a brief statement saying that customers were “experiencing issues,” but telecommunications companies in the Middle East and Europe laid the blame at the Canadian company’s door.

Verizon Wireless said its high-speed 4G data network was suffering an outage, a black eye for the carrier that prides itself on the quality and stability of its network.