Blackberry service disruption reaches Canada

Research in Motion CEO Mike Lazaridis announced service on the Blackberry network had been restored worldwide on Thursday. Blackberry users across Canada had been grinding their teeth in frustration on Wednesday after a network failure in Europe early in the week led to a worldwide Blackberry service disruption. An unknown number of Canadians were left without access to their messaging service and to internet on their smartphones.

David Yach, RIM's chief technology officer, pegged the problem at the failure of a back-up system in Europe. He says the company throttled traffic in order to get back on line.

Yach says all messages will be delivered once service is restored.

The disruption came at an unfortunate moment for the makers of Blackberry, as the iPhone 4S comes to stores on Friday. Apple has included a service called iMessage on the new phones to rival Blackberry’s BBM messaging service. 

There are around 70 million Blackberry users around the world.