* US Justice Dept has sued to stop buy of T-Mobile USAWASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - A federal telecommunications regulator asked AT&T Inc on Thursday to provide data on claims that its deal to buy T-Mobile USA would mean a net gain of U.S. jobs, saying its responses on this issue “remain incomplete.”The Federal Communications Commission said in a letter to AT&T’s lead attorney Rick Rosen that the agency had asked about U.S. jobs in a request for information sent in May.AT&T has defended the $39 billion transaction, saying it would bring 5,000 overseas jobs back to the United States, but the FCC pressed for data to show there would be a net increase in U.S. jobs.”Our review of the information currently in our record suggests that AT&T’s response on this issue remain incomplete,” wrote Rick Kaplan, chief of the FCC’s wireless communications bureau.Kaplan also asked for all AT&T data on the “size and location” of AT&T’s workforce currently and after the planned merger is consummated. The $39 billion deal would merge two of the four large national cellphone carriers.In August, the Justice Department sued to stop the deal, saying that the transaction would lead to higher wireless prices. A trial will begin on Feb. 13.The FCC must also approve the merger for it to go ahead.Last month, attorneys general from California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington signed onto the effort to stopThe deal would vault AT&T over Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc , into the No. 1 spot. T-Mobile USA is now owned by Deutsche Telekom AG .Sprint , the third-largest carrier, has bitterly opposed the AT&T buy.A key government concern is that T-Mobile, the No. 4 wireless carrier, generally costs less than other carriers so its disappearance could mean higher prices for wireless service.

Users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered patchy email service and no access to browsing and messaging, ratcheting up negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share to Apple (AAPL.O) and Samsung (005930.KS).RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.”The messaging and browsing delays … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” it said. “As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service.”The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.”It’s a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time,” said Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura.”One possibility could be that it encourages client companies to look more at other options such as allowing users to connect their own devices to the corporate server and save themselves the cost of buying everyone a BlackBerry.”Many companies, no longer seeing the need to pay to be locked into RIM’s secure proprietary email service, have already begun allowing employees to use alternative smartphones, particularly Apple’s iPhone, for corporate mail.RIM has made inroads into the youth market attracted by its free BlackBerry Messenger BBM.L service, partially compensating for its losses in the corporate market. But new products like its PlayBook tablet computer have been poorly received.Following a dismal set of quarterly results and a plunge in its share price, some investors are now calling for a break-up, sale or change of management at the company.Increasingly frustrated users tweeted their frustration on Wednesday, while RIM’s own official Twitter feed was last updated on Tuesday night, saying problems were being resolved and it was sorry for the inconvenience.Veteran British entrepreneur Alan Sugar, who founded electronics company Amstrad in 1968, tweeted: “In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such an outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to fix.”Some customers used humour to deal with the situation. One joke making the rounds on Twitter said: “What did the one BBM user say to the other? Nothing.”