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BlackBerry blackout causes headache for some

By David Freedlander | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

At least the pecking fingers of BlackBerry addicts got some relief.

BlackBerries went out across North America Monday in what Research in Motion, the company that invented the device, called a "critical severity outage."

About 8 million BlackBerry users received, ironically, an email from the company about 3:30 p.m. alerting them that "network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption."

By the evening, service was slowly being restored, but it was not clear when it would return to normal, nor had the company announced what malfunctioned.

This is the third significant BlackBerry blackout in less than a year. In April, a similar nationwide service outage lasted for 10 hours.

After that outage RIM CEO Jim Balsille told eWeek, "It shouldn't have happened, and it won't happen again."

"It's a global and public safety imperative," he added.

BlackBerry's consumer-oriented Internet Service also saw a severe blackout in early September.

A spokesman for RIM did not return phone calls last night.

Much of corporate America, and an increasing number of consumers, have come to rely on the network's email service. A BlackBerry outage during the middle of the workday has the potential to snarl much of the city's workaday life.

Nick Sbordone, a spokesman for the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. said thousands of city employees rely on the device but didn't report any major problems because of the blackout.

"We are monitoring the situation closely and have notified all city agencies of the outage," he said. "We have advised affected staff to use alternative means."