Mobile operator Vodafone apologised on Friday after some customers using Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry handsets lost emails in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Vodafone, the world's second-largest mobile operator with 407 million customers globally, said the problem was caused by a router error and said services are being restored.

BlackBerry users in South Africa who use the Vodacom network were among those affected by the outage. Vodafone owns a majority stake in Vodacom.

"We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused and we will provide updates as necessary," the group said in a statement.

RIM, which has been hit before by high-profile outages in the last two years that affected millions of customers, said it was supporting Vodafone's efforts to resolve the issue.

Users on Twitter also reported problems with accessing emails on Blackberries but it did not appear to be a widespread outage.

"Vodafone can confirm that some BlackBerry customers experienced issues with their data services this morning in Europe, Middle East and Africa," it said yesterday.

"Services are in the process of being restored and we continue to monitor the situation closely."

A former RIM executive, who did want to be identified, has told Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper that problems could have occurred where Vodafone’s network links into RIM’s network.

“It will be their relay links that meet the BlackBerry network,” the former executive told the newspaper.

“The carrier provides the links into the RIM network. So Vodafone (or their suppliers) have outages on those trunks, [which are] the cables between the Vodafone operation and RIM’s operational ‘meet me’ point of presence,” the former exec added.

This latest outage has also come as RIM prepares to launch its BlackBerry 10 touch-compatible operating system at the end of the month, which the firm hopes will help it gain market share against Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones.