RIM says most N.A. BlackBerry service restored

By Wojtek Dabrowski

TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion (RIMM.O) (RIM.TO) said on Wednesday that BlackBerry service had been restored to most users of the popular wireless e-mail device after an overnight service interruption hit customers across North America.

The company said in a statement that it's reviewing the root cause of the disruption, which began Tuesday night, and is "closely monitoring systems to maintain normal service levels". It gave no details on what caused the outage.

Although BlackBerry e-mail service was "delayed or intermittent," RIM said the phone service wasn't affected.

RIM has about 8 million subscribers who use various models of its ubiquitous BlackBerry. The device has become a staple with lawyers, business people and other professionals, but has yet to reach similar consumer-market popularity.

RIM's often-volatile shares, which can regularly lose or gain between 1 and 3 percent in a session, were up 78 cents at $132.05 on Nasdaq, recovering from a drop that came shortly after the market opened. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, they rose 22 Canadian cents to C$149.04.

Nick Agostino, an analyst at Research Capital in Toronto, said RIM has a strong track record of maintaining stable service, and said those who would call the disruption a black eye for the company are "just overblowing the whole situation."

He noted European service wasn't affected, and said service outages have been very rare for RIM in the past.

"This sort of stuff is expected," Agostino said. "Obviously you don't want it to be frequent."