Service disruptions afflict BlackBerry

BlackBerry users were left without e-mail for more than nine hours late Tuesday – the second time the service has been interrupted in a week.

During the interruption, message delivery was delayed or intermittent in North America and South America. But phone and text services were unaffected.

The exact cause for why the popular wireless e-mail service stopped working is “currently under review” but Research in Motion, the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry, said the problem may have stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of its BlackBerry Messenger application.

The company, known as RIM, said it is providing a new version of BlackBerry Messenger and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since Dec. 14 to upgrade to the latest version.

RIM apologized to its customers for the disruption, but that didn’t stop BlackBerry users from blasting the company.

“My Internet is still not working so … BOO!” wrote one Twitter user. Another suggested a change of service: “I might just have to switch from a BlackBerry to iPhone. I hate to say it.”

The outcry was unusual, said Jeff Kagan, a telecommunications analyst. RIM has developed a “cult-like following” among many customers.

“I don’t see customers canceling service yet, but if outages continue, that may start to happen,” Kagan said. “Every year or two, RIM suffers an outage. So far it hasn’t hurt them too bad.”

RIM had major outages in April 2007 and February 2008. Thursday, BlackBerry customers in North America had e-mail delays.

“This is the second outage,” Kagan said. “Customers listened to reports of the first and put a notch in their mind. Now there is a second outage, and customers put another notch in the mind and pay more attention.”