BlackBerry Outage Hits US

BlackBerry's epic service outage finally struck North America today, as users in the US and Canada lost access to various communication services. Today is the third straight day of outages, which began in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India, Reuters reports. RIM blamed the problem on a core switch failure within its infrastructure. The company thought it had fixed the problem yesterday, but later admitted that it hadn't—and that outages had actually spread to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

"We thought we had found the problem but had not," RIM's UK and Ireland managing director said today, according to Mashable. "We are working around the clock to get to the bottom of the problem." Whatever the cause, users are incensed. “In all my years in the IT biz, I have never seen such an outage,” tweeted one frustrated user. Quipped another: “What did the one BBM user say to the other. Nothing." Still another, spotted by the Guardian: “It was nice of BlackBerry to honor Steve Jobs with two days of silence." (More BlackBerry stories.)