BlackBerry Outage Resolved, To Great Relief Of New Yorkers

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) - Hope your thumbs are rested, because BlackBerry service is getting back to normal following a three-day outage.

Millions of customers had their Internet services and email functionality interrupted. On Wednesday, the glitch that started abroad hit the Tri-State Area, exasperating many customers.

"You don't realize it 'til it's gone, what a reflex it is to look at it all the time. It's kind of sad, actually, but I've become dependent on it," one BlackBerry user told 1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg.

Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, posted a statement that says services are improving.

Many BlackBerry users have been unable to send and receive emails and messages in an outage that started Monday in Europe. Web browsers haven't been working either. On Thursday morning, BlackBerry users on Twitter and online forums were reporting that their phones were buzzing with incoming messages again.

RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis apologized for the outage in a video posted to the company's site Thursday morning.

"I apologize for the service outages this week," Laziridis said. "We've let many of you down."

"It's too soon to say that this issue is fully resolved," Lazaridis said. "I'd like to give you an estimated time of full recovery around the world, but I cannot do this with certainty at this time."

"We're doing everything in our power to restore regular service levels, and we're working tirelessly to restore your trust in us," he said.

A crucial link in BlackBerry's European network failed Monday, and a backup also failed. Although the underlying issues were quickly repaired, the system had built up a backlog of emails and messages that needed to be wound down. Meanwhile, messages destined for Europe were piling up at BlackBerry data centers in the rest of world. By Wednesday, the outage had spread to the U.S. and Canada, slowing service to a crawl there.