BlackBerry Service Restored After Outage

Wednesday, April 18th 2007, 9:24 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ BlackBerry service was being restored Wednesday morning after an overnight outage that left millions of users without mobile access to their e-mail on the popular device.

Research in Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that provides the devices and e-mail service, said the service interruption began Tuesday night, affecting users in North America.

``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,'' the statement from RIM said.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the problems affected all cellular carriers that offer BlackBerry service.

Last week, RIM reported that it added about 1 million BlackBerry subscriber accounts during the first three months of 2007, bringing its total subscriber base to 8 million.

Jitters about the outage sent RIM's share price sliding in the opening minutes of Wednesday's trading, but the stock recovered quickly. The stock was changing hands at $130.65 a share, down 62 cents, on the Nasdaq Stock Market after falling as low as $128.80.