A RIM representative said a hardware failure Wednesday triggered a backup system that operated at a lower capacity "than expected." Service has been restored, she said.
BlackBerry customers, including a federal agency in Washington, D.C., were told by RIM on Wednesday of an outage affecting accounts nationwide and across all carriers, according to an e-mail from RIM seen by CNET News.com. Similar warnings were posted at Internet chat room PDA Street.
Complaints about disrupted service also surfaced Wednesday from BlackBerry customers served by operators Cingular Wireless, Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications.
Cell phone operator T-Mobile USA said an undisclosed number of its BlackBerry subscribers in Manhattan had only sporadic e-mail and other kinds of data service between 7:45 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. The problems were not related to what appears to be a nationwide Blackberry outage, according to a RIM representative.
On June 17, Blackberry users from Philadelphia to Chicago to Atlanta reported service outages.
