BlackBerry service outage widens to U.S.

BlackBerry users around the world stared at their device's screens Wednesday as an outage of email, messaging and Internet services on the phones spread to the United States and Canada, and stretched into a third day for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

It was the biggest outage in years for BlackBerry users, and strained their relationship with an already tarnished brand. It came on the eve of the launch of a mighty competitor -- a new iPhone model.

Managers at Sprint and Verizon stores in Huntington who were not authorized to speak to reporters said people had been coming in for much of the day Wednesday, saying they felt out of touch with e-friends.

A smattering of users interviewed Wednesday said they hadn't noticed. Some didn't care.

One, who declined to be identified as he walked into Barnes & Noble in Huntington Station, glanced at his device and saw that he was receiving emails as of 2:26 p.m. "I guess I wasn't affected," he said.

But another, Cesar Alejandro, 24, of Huntington, said that even before he noticed that his most recent email had a time stamp of 8 a.m. Wednesday, he was done with the BlackBerry that he said had let him down far too often.

"I don't like the plan any more," he said as he all but ran into a Melville Sprint store in the late afternoon -- to buy a new iPhone. He said the worldwide email glitch that struck BlackBerry users like him confirmed his suspicions that it was time to switch devices. "I'm upset," he added. "All day?"

Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, said a crucial link in its European infrastructure failed Monday, and a backup didn't work either. The underlying problem has been fixed, but a backlog of emails and messages had built up that the company was working to reduce.

Meanwhile, emails and messages from other regions to Europe were piling up in RIM's systems in the rest of the world, like letters clogging a mailbox. That caused the outages in the United States and Asia, said David Yach, RIM's chief technology officer for software.

At Zenprise Inc., a Fremont, Calif., firm that helps companies manage BlackBerrys issued to employees, vice president Ahmed Datoo said emails started piling up on U.S. servers shortly after midnight. By morning, the congestion was heavy enough at a particular client company to delay all email for BlackBerrys. The pileup started to ease in the afternoon.

RIM is already struggling with delays and decreases in stock shares, which fell 53 cents, or 2.17 percent, to close at $23.88. The shares hit $19.29 a week ago, the lowest level since 2006.

With Zachary R. Dowdy