BlackBerry users around the U.S. were stranded for about three hours Monday when their Web-based e-mail service blacked out.
The outage didn't affect corporate users who are linked with their BlackBerry Enterprise Server and with a data center hosted by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. But from about 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, consumers and small business users who rely on the Web-based BlackBerry Internet Service, available through their mobile carriers, were unable to send or receive e-mail.
Apparently, no e-mail was lost: At the end of that period, users were receiving a backlog that had queued up.
A CNET.com story on the outage quoted a RIM PR agency spokeswoman, Marisa Conway, as saying that "some customers experienced a delay receiving e-mail" but that the outage "wasn't systemwide." The company has not responded to inquiries asking for details
