The BlackBerry outage that has been affecting users around the globe for the past two days has spread to the U.S. and Canada, Research in Motion confirmed today.
"BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this morning," RIM said in a statement. "We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available."
Last night, RIM said the ongoing problems were caused by a core switch failure inside its network. "Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated, and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible," RIM said.
The glitch prompted messaging and browsing delays in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, and that has now moved to North America.
In a statement, Sprint said users "may experience delays or have trouble accessing the Internet; receiving/sending email and text messages; and using Blackberry messenger services." The glitch is affecting all carriers that offer BlackBerry phones, however.
Reports of a BlackBerry outage first hit Monday evening, which RIM acknowledged on Twitter. The company later said the issue had been resolved, but that was obviously not the case.
"We're aware many of you are experiencing service delays. Restoring full service is our number one priority," the company said today.
To keep tabs on when your BlackBerry might be working again, RIM has been posting updates on its Web site, as well as on Twitter.
The outage comes several days before Apple is set to release its next-generation smartphone, the iPhone 4S. Apple's iOS has been gaining on RIM's BlackBerry in terms of OS market share in recent months. Recent data from Nielsen found that of smartphone users in the U.S., about 43 percent have an Android device, 28 percent have an iPhone, and 18 percent have BlackBerrys. Only 9 percent of those who bought a smartphone in the last three months, however, opted for a BlackBerry.