Whilst at work today, our department received a number of complaints from customers advising that they couldn’t send messages on their BlackBerrys.

Upon investigation with Vodafone UK (whom the company has contracts with) we were advised that messages which are being sent via GPRS are being purged. A bar is then being placed on the SIM and Vodafone have to remove this.

In most cases, this is being done automatically, but where the complaints were coming through, these obviously weren’t being lifted.

Vodafone advised us that if we had any more callers, then they should be directed to Vodafone, who will then check their account. They also advised us to inform the customer to ask when the last time they were connected to a GPRS cell.

Now I’m not sure if this is a Nationwide issue, looking through various sources, I cannot see chatter, so it seems that it is an isolated incident, however, I have emailed Vodafone for confirmation, and hope to have an answer soon.

Are you in the UK? Have you experienced sending messages today? Leave your comments below.

Edit

I have been speaking with Vodafone via Twitter (@VodafoneUK) They are not aware of any problems, but did say that there were a few problems in the London area last night (01/18/10)  I will analyse the data at work today and see where the customers were located and update accordingly.

Edit

It would appear that this issue has been isolated to business users, what they are needing to do is to contact Vodafone and request that the bar is lifted from their SIM. We are still trying to ascertain whether this has been our company alone which has been affected, or whether it is nationwide.  Problems are still occuring and we are in contact with our Account Manager.