Thousands of BlackBerry users Island-wide couldn’t send or receive messages and e-mails yesterday as Bermuda was hit by a worldwide technical glitch affecting the smart phones’ Canadian maker Research in Motion Ltd.Both CellOne and Digicel customers were affected as the outages and delays in BlackBerry’s messaging, web browser and e-mail service w spread to the US and Canada, while stretching into a third day in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.Both Digicel and CellOne BlackBerry users in Bermuda were affected - though not all users.RIM last night said the underlying problem had been fixed, but a backlog of e-mails and messages had built up that the company has yet to work down.Meanwhile, RIM said e-mails and messages from other regions are piling up in RIM’s system, like letters clogging a mailbox, and that’s causing the continuing disruptions.Digicel spokesman Shane Mora said less than 50 percent of Bermuda users were affected.With an estimated 25,000 and 30,000 BlackBerry users in Bermuda Digicel has said the Island has one of the highest BlackBerry penetrations in the world.A Digicel statement this morning said: “Digicel wishes to advise the public that Research in Motion (RIM) is experiencing a service issue affecting BlackBerry Messenger, e-mail and web browsing. This issue is not limited to Digicel customers, as it is affecting BlackBerry customers across the region.“Digicel wishes to thank our BlackBerry customers for their patience while RIM BlackBerry support teams are working to resolve the issue.”CellOne said BlackBerry customers may today be experiencing BBM, e-mail and Internet issues.The company said RIM has been in contact with it and is working hard to resolve the issues.CellOne spokeswoman Schereene Outerbridge said RIM is providing regular updates on the disruption on the front page of its web page at http://www.rim.com.A similar problem hampered the service in Bermuda as well as North America and the Caribbean just last month.The widespread problems are adding to the woes of RIM. It’s struggling with slowing sales and a tablet that’s been a dud, reported AP.On Tuesday, RIM said a crucial link in its infrastructure had failed, and a back-up didn’t work either.“The resolution of this service issue is our Number One priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels,” the company said yesterday.The Financial Times reported the outages, which were believed to have begun at a company-owned data centre in Slough, outside London, were caused by a “core switch” failure and problems with the network of back-up servers. RIM had claimed to have solved the problems only for the problems to reoccur a few hours later, the FT said.Many frustrated BlackBerry customers are scanning their contracts to see if they would be entitled to compensation for the loss of traffic on their networks.In the United Arab Emirates, the two biggest phone companies said they would compensate their BlackBerry users for the mishap by giving them at least three days of free service.There are about 70 million BlackBerry users around the world.The disruptions were the worst since an outage swept North America two years ago, and analysts said it could ratchet up the negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share to rivals such as Apple and Samsung.