RIM reports "critical" BlackBerry outage

By Wojtek Dabrowski

TORONTO (Reuters) - A major outage hit BlackBerry users in North America on Monday, cutting off wireless e-mail for everyone from busy executives to political campaign staff on the eve of three U.S. presidential primaries.

The problem, which BlackBerry owner Research In Motion described as a "critical severity outage" affecting users in the Americas, once again raised concerns about the stability of the e-mail service 10 months after a widespread crash last April.

RIM said in a later statement that data services in the Americas experienced delays on late Monday afternoon, around 3.30pm Eastern time, but were restored in the early evening at around 6.30pm.

But by about 7:00 p.m. Eastern time some users said a few e-mails were trickling through while others continued to be without service.

Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at AR Communications, said reliability is a serious concern for companies like RIM because if problems become routine, they can drive customers away.

"It's a big issue and it's a growing issue," Levy said, adding that huge outages could prove to be "a major Achilles' heel" for RIM.

RIM's U.S. shares fell as much as 1.3 percent on the news, after closing up 5.3 percent in regular Nasdaq trade. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the shares finished the day C$4.73 higher at C$94.62.

RIM notified its clients of the outage in an e-mail, but officials at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company were not immediately available for comment.