Pix: Technorati.comKUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Blackberry users were left fuming today after their devices’ Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service experienced problems, leaving a large number of the estimated 1.5 million local users stranded without the ability to use its instant-messaging service.

The interruption to the service, which is believed to have occurred in the afternoon, left many Malaysian BBM users furious.

Many, as a result, took to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to rant about being cut-off from the service.

Users had posted messages complaining that they weren’t able to send or receive BBM messages and railed against the provider, Research In Motion, for the long period it took to get the service back up. Many eventually switched to another instant message service, WhatsApp in the interim.

The problem wasn’t only limited to only Malaysia. The BBM outage is believed to have affected the Asia-Pacific region, where countries like Indonesia and Philippines form a large number of the region’s Blackberry users.

Indonesian newspaper Detik had quoted RIM Indonesia spokesman Yolanda Nainggolan as saying that the problem wasn’t only in Indonesia, but also across the whole of Asia Pacific. She also said RIM was doing its best to fix the situation, but conceded that she didn’t know for sure how soon they can fix this problem.

The outage is reminiscent of the one last October, where Blackberry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa experienced a similar service outage as well.

The latest incident is yet another dent in RIM’s reputation, even more so when the company had invested significantly in promoting its highly-anticipated Blackberry 10, due next year. The Blackberry 10 had been touted as RIM’s big attempt to win back a portion of the market share lost to the Android platform, notably via iPhone and Samsung Galaxy users.

RIM, in the meantime, had issued a brief statement admitting a problem in the BBM service.

“We are currently experiencing a BBM issue that is impacting some users in APAC. All relevant support teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologize to any customers who may be affected,” read the statement.

A spokesman for RIM Malaysia said they would issue an updated statement on the situation soon.

It is learnt that BBM service in Malaysia eventually resumed around 6pm.

- mD