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'Critical' email outage affects BlackBerry users
CrackBerries disconnected

By Reuters

Published: Tuesday 12 February 2008

Email service of RIM's BlackBerry smart phones experienced a "critical severity outage" yesterday, the company told clients in an email.

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RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson said in an email: "This is an emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage." The message said the outage affected enterprise clients and "users of the Americas network".

RIM was not immediately available for comment and its email gave no estimate on when service may be restored or how many individuals could be affected.

Last April, a massive outage crashed BlackBerry service across the US, leaving thousands of users without access to wireless email.

Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said at the time that such incidents were "very rare" and the company was taking steps to prevent such an outage from happening again.

Executives, politicians, lawyers and other professionals rely on the BlackBerry for its ability to send secure emails.

RIM is also adding more retail customers to its subscriber base, which late last year reached about 12 million people worldwide.

RIM shares fell to $93.14 in after-hours electronic trade, from their regular-session close of $94.47 on the Nasdaq market.