BlackBerry's 3-day outage over, maker says

NEW YORK - BlackBerry services buzzed back to life across the world Thursday, after a three-day outage that interrupted email messages and Internet services for millions of customers.

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the phones, said the system was back to normal early Thursday East Coast time. The company was flushing through stalled messages in the morning.

Some phones that have been out of touch for a long time may need to have their batteries pulled out and put back in to regain a connection to the network, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said on a conference call.

A crucial link in BlackBerry's European network failed Monday, and a backup also failed. That immediately cut off service for most users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Chile, Brazil and Argentina.

Although the underlying issues were quickly repaired, the system had built up a backlog of emails and messages that needed to be wound down. Meanwhile, messages destined for the affected countries were piling up at BlackBerry data centers in the rest of world, slowing service everywhere. By Wednesday, the outage had spread to the U.S. and Canada.

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Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie said they had not made plans yet to compensate customers, but they are turning their attention to the question.

"That is something we plan to come back to these customers on very soon. ... Our priority right up until this moment (has been) making sure the system's up and running," Balsillie said. "We're going to fully commit to win that trust back."

BlackBerry users don't pay the company directly for its email and messaging services. Instead, the phone companies pay RIM on behalf of their subscribers. Balsillie said carriers haven't asked for compensation yet.

"This has not been about pointing fingers," he said. "This has been about serving customers."

RIM shares were down 58 cents, or 2.4 percent, at $23.28 in morning trading in New York. Investors have taken the outage in stride, figuring that it's only one of many problems RIM is facing. The shares are down less than 1 percent since the outage began.

[Suppozo]

yeah cool story. you charge us extra because your phones are too l33t to work on a normal data plan, then your servers fail. cool story bro. fix the crap so my blackberry works on a normal data plan and doesnt require one directly from you guys...

[rwsmith29456]

I can go without being on line....barely.

[Harden_Tar]

How the CrackBerry has fallen. Propietary technology sometimes is not so smart.

[Forty-Four]

There will be a resurgence when people see how retarted the iPhone really is. The droid isn't bad, but I hate touchscreed things.

[LianaNadine]

I noticed none of my FB notifications or email were coming through, but this happens regularly enough that I didn't think anything about it. I'd say two to three times a month I have a blackout period where I don't receive any of my messages or notifications, lasting anywhere between twelve hours and three days. And then when I do receive them, my phone freezes as it tries to pull everything in at once. Honestly,i thoughtit was an issue with Verizon, not blackberry.. I was eligible for an upgrade in July, and in the ten years I have been with Verizon, every time my phone has hit upgrade eligibility, it has usually less than a month before it starts acting funky. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but I have always felt that Verizon cancels software upgrades or makes them inaccessible to get people to buy new phones and sign new contracts as soon as possible, rather than keeping their current phone until their contract expires.. Although I am still inclined to think that, since this is my first blackberry, and every other phone I've ever had (Samsung, LG, nokia, etc..) have all behaved the same way once they were upgrade eleigible

[Forty-Four]

Are you sure that Verizon is truly unlimited? I think they also slow you down after a certain amount of data usage.

[Ardhy4070]

I Went Mental without my BBM

[Forty-Four]

I'm a BlackBerry customer, I didn't notice anything other than a slow down in speed. Nothing to complain about, since I am not as impatient as others.

[debbie1120]

I wonder if it was all the blackberry's. I have a torch and nothing happened to me. The company I work for uses the Bold and some people were talking about the problems, so I was just thinking that maybe it wasn't all Blackberry's