Dubai: Etisalat subscribers faced a third consecutive day of disruptions on Tuesday that the carrier said were unrelated to the disruptions on the previous two days which had only affected BlackBerry users.

Etisalat issued a statement on Tuesday apologising for disruptions in voice services for its subscribers. The disruptions, which caused difficulty in reaching etisalat mobile service subscribers mostly in Dubai, were caused by a scheduled software upgrade.

It is not known if the carrier had notified subscribers of the upgrade. Etisalat however told Gulf News' IT department earlier that the disruptions were caused by "outages in GSM switches".

Subscribers contacted Gulf News complaining about not being able to reach mobile phones Tuesday morning.

Saeed Al Badi, Senior Manager Media Relations at etisalat said: "Etisalat apologises to its customers for the inconvenience caused due to the disruptions, and assures that the problem has been resolved. Etisalat thanks its customers for their patience and understanding."