The problem, which BlackBerry owner Research In Motion described as a "critical severity outage" affecting users in the Americas, once again raised concerns about the stability of the e-mail service 10 months after a widespread crash last April.Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at AR Communications, said reliability is a serious concern for companies like RIM because if problems become routine, they can drive customers away."It's a big issue and it's a growing issue," Levy said, adding that huge outages could prove to be "a major Achilles' heel" for RIM.RIM's US shares fell as much as 1.3 per cent on the news, after closing up 5.3 per cent in regular Nasdaq trade.On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the shares finished the day C$4.73 higher at C$94.62.RIM notified its clients of the outage in an e-mail, but officials at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company were not immediately available for comment."This is an emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson said in an e-mail sent to large clients.The notice gave no details on the cause, when service might be restored or how many people could be affected.The last big outage in April 2007 provoked an angry backlash from more compulsive users, who have dubbed the device "CrackBerry" due to its drug-like addictiveness.
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