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blackberry outage today

Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry phone, said Thursday that some of its North American customers are experiencing outages with the phone's BIS, or BlackBerry Internet Service which is affecting their email service.

RIM said in a statement that its technicians are working to resolve the email issue. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said that the phone service, browsing and "PIN-to-PIN messaging" were not affected.

The email outage is affecting all BlackBerry users, regardless of their carrier, according to Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier.

According to the Canadian Press, the last major BlackBerry outage was in February 2008, , when an upgrade to the wireless system appeared to have been behind a three-hour service disruption affecting millions of users in North America.

The company is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results after markets close later today.

RIMM shares were down $1.16 or 1.8 percent to $63.51 a share in late morning trading on the Nasdaq.