Johannesburg - SA's third mobile operator, Cell C, said on Thursday it would compensate its BlackBerry users for the service disruption caused by a core switch failure within the infrastructure of parent company Research In Motion (RIM).
The crash of the BlackBerry email and BlackBerry Messenger services began on Monday affecting users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, and spreading to North America on Tuesday.
In SA alone, more than 1.5 million users of the services were likely to have been affected.
"To thank customers for their patience and understanding during the BlackBerry services downtime this week, Cell C will be compensating its customers who are using the service.
"Cell C will give its customers R10 off the cost of their BlackBerry Internet/Enterprise Service for the month of October as well as providing them 10 free SMSs for the time they could not use Blackberry Messenger," the group said in a statement.
The mobile operator stressed that while it had no role in the service disruption, "the company wants to ensure customers are compensated for the loss of service as a gesture of goodwill. Customers will receive more information about the compensation via SMS next week."