BlackBerry Outages Spread to North America: When Will the Nightmare End?

All this week, BlackBerry owners in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India have been without service for the third day in a row. Today, there's news that it's spreading to North American users.

Most users elsewhere have been cut off from text messaging, emailing, and Internet browsing. Research In Motion (RIM), manufacturer of BlackBerry, is saying the outage problem is due to a core switch failure. They say they are working on fixing the issue.

Sprint customers report that they are affected, but there is no word from other carries yet. According to Sprint's network, outages began Wednesday morning at 7AM EDT. There were both delays and failures in sending messages and emails. Some South American customers in Columbia are even demanding RIM to pay them for service failures.

RIM has already been suffering from rumored downsizing and falling shares recently. Especially with the iPhone's new arrival, outages could not come at a more inopportune time for the company. Millions are still being affected by their BlackBerry being down. If RIM wants to make a comeback, it better act fast before customers make the switch to iPhones.