BlackBerry data services go dark across North America

BlackBerry users across the United States and Canada lost access to email and internet on Monday after a major outage struck the network operated by Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind the devices.

AT&T, one of the affected US carriers, confirmed the disruption after RIM notified it of the problem Monday afternoon. The failure was isolated to RIM's wireless data infrastructure, not the underlying telephone network, and appeared to affect all North American carriers equally.

An AT&T spokesman described the impact as a total loss of data functions: email, internet browsing, and related services. RIM was working to restore service, with no timeline given for resolution.

Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in February 2008, in its own words.