Update: BlackBerry blackout hits RIM's customers

BlackBerry addicts were forced to undergo a period of unplanned cold turkey last night after a massive outage on Tuesday.

The outage reportedly affected users in Canada and the US for several hours and resulted in emails not being sent from or delivered to the handhelds. Customers of BlackBerry-maker RIM also report not being able to access service books.

Users posting on BlackBerry forums have reported that US BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and US BlackBerry Internet Service accounts have experienced the outage. Users in other countries, including the UK, who connect via a North American server will also be experiencing the blackout.

One such user is Nic Evans, IT director of Key Equipment Finance. Evans told silicon.com he has been experiencing delays in his email traffic and said his address book look-up no longer works.

RIM users have today received an email update informing them the server problem should now be resolved, although users on Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon are still having "sporadic issues" connecting to the server.

"Most all BlackBerries should be working now. If your BlackBerry is not, please remove your battery and then place it back into the device allowing the BlackBerry to reboot. The signal should resume and emails should start coming into your BlackBerry. If it does not, your carrier is still having issues and we will send out another email when we are notified from the carrier that the issue is fully resolved," the email continued.

However, it seems UK users with servers based on this side of the pond have dodged the outage. Several UK CIOs confirmed to silicon.com that their BlackBerry service has been uninterrupted throughout the outage period.

UK mobile networks have confirmed that users in this country should be unaffected. Spokespeople for O2 and Orange said there had been no problems with UK customers, while an O2 spokeswoman told silicon.com only users with US-based servers will have seen any break in service.

According to US news channel WNBC.com, RIM's infrastructure failed at around 20:00(EST) following a reset and has been out ever since. The troubles are expected to continue today with the possibility of further problems caused as the backed up email filters through the system.

A RIM spokesman told WNBC.com the system is not expected to crash as the backlog of messages is delivered, however.

RIM told silicon.com in a statement: "A service interruption occurred Tuesday night that affected BlackBerry in North America. Email delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service on BlackBerry handsets was unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but service for most customers was restored overnight and RIM is closely monitoring systems in order to maintain normal service levels."

There are now more than eight million BlackBerry users worldwide, according to company figures.

silicon.com's Andy McCue contributed to this report