BlackBerry Service Restored; RIM Says No Messages Lost

A three-hour outage reportedly prevented BlackBerry users in North America from sending e-mail from about 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday, but service has been restored.

The problem apparently may have slowed down service for a while afterward, too, because of a backlog of undelivered e-mail. However, voice and text messaging weren't affected, and no messages were lost, according to Research in Motion, the Canadian-based company that provides the smartphone service, reports PC Magazine. It says the outage is the fourth time in less than a year that RIM has had to apologize for outages. The other three were in April, August and December 2007.

RIM said it doesn't yet know what caused the problem, but has a team working to find out—and prevent it from happening again, reports Reuters.

The company has about 12 million customers worldwide, including President George W. Bush, notes Bloomberg.