Blackberry outages spread to North America

CANADIAN MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS FIRM Research in Motion (RIM) has seen its catastrophic core switch failure problems spread to its home turf throughout North America.

This is the third day of problems for the company's users, and it has put RIM under increasing pressure to get its world spanning network fixed and its users' Blackberry services restored.

According to Reuters the firm has contacted some of its American customers - by landline we assume - to warn them about the problems, which it said were similar to those that have kept its services down around the world. This, we assume, is a diplomatic way of saying 'bad'.

Problems in Canada were confirmed by a spokesman for local telecoms provider Bell. "A minority of BlackBerry users at all Canadian carriers are affected," said spokesman Mark Langton to the Associated Press. "We understand the issue will be corrected this morning."

Twitter is filling up with criticisms as America wakes up to the faults and, like in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, many users are suggesting that it will force them to stop using the service altogether.

Journalist and family man Piers Morgan tweeted his dissatisfaction at the company, saying, "I love you #Blackberry - but if you continue to stop me BBM communicating with my sons, we're so, like, OVER".

The INQUIRER predicts that competing communications services such as Skype, Google's gchat, text messages, email and perhaps carrier pigeons will start to see more traffic soon. µ